A tense and absorbing political thriller is not what I was expecting for this second book of a trilogy about the head of a Hong Kong triad establishing businesses in southern China. Ian Hamilton, creator of the Ava Lee series, does some of his best work here, recreating exactly how it is possible for corruption to take place in China’s Special Economic Zones.
Life in Chow Tung's Fanling triad has had a long period of calm. Uncle Chow Tung is young for a triad leader, in his forties, but for all the criminality of gang-life, his daily existence is remarkably staid. His only vice appears to be cigarette-smoking, his only hobby playing the horses at Hong Kong’s Happy Valley Racecourse. Lesser leaders get up to more deviltry in their free time, perhaps, but the fact that Uncle provides a stable, low-drama income from off-track betting shops, restaurants and massage parlors is what his triad and others in the area appreciate about him.
We get a course in foresight, the savvy business planning Chow engages in to supplement the triad’s falling income as a result of societal and economic changes in Hong Kong. It’s the 1980s. Chow reads in the paper that Deng Xiao Ping was trying something new: socialism at the top of new economic structures and a loosened market-based environment at the individual level.
The circumstances in Shenzhen and the other special economic zones were unlike anywhere else on earth at that time and the Chinese government was making it up as they went along. If things started booming a little too wildly, they would clamp down with a blinding ferocity. Hamilton walks us through a mini-purge and it is terrifying. The individual is insignificant and rule of law is virtually unknown.
Despite the fact that only two women had speaking parts in this entire book--Mrs. Jia is a restaurant owner selling congee and Gao Lan is wife of a Chinese Communist Politburo member--I was surprised to find I did not really feel the lack. To me, learning the relative ease with which Uncle began his empire in China as well as concise details about the bribes he had to pay and the coercive conditions of his continued investments was utterly absorbing. I was as stressed as Uncle through the twists and turns of his fortunes.
At the very end of the book, I was left pondering the dubious legality of all the foreign investment enterprises in those special zones and the odd criminality that comes out of political infighting in China. In politics as in business, there is hardly a safe place of truth and virtue. Is that something we just have to acknowledge and get on with the business of skimming, lying and personal advantage? What a chump I am. I have often felt I can’t make it in the real world, and this is some weird confirmation.
I love the work Hamilton did here. The tension is ratcheted up high and then screwing the clamps takes our breath away. For Chow Tung and us both, it is exquisite torture. I can’t wait to read the next installment which should bring us our first glimpse of Ava Lee. This is terrific, addictive storytelling.
The Chow Tung Series
Fate (Uncle Chow Tung #1)
The Ava Lee Series
The Water Rat of Wanchai (Ava Lee #1)
The Disciple of Las Vegas (Ava Lee #2)
The Wild Beasts of Wuhan (Ava Lee #3)
The Red Pole of Macau (Ava Lee #4)
The Scottish Banker of Surabaya (Ava Lee #5)
The Two Sisters of Borneo (Ava Lee #6)
The King of Shanghai (Ava Lee #7)
The Princeling of Nanjing (Ava Lee #8)
The Couturier of Milan (Ava Lee #9)
The Imam of Tawi-Tawi (Ava Lee #10)
The Goddess of Yantai (Ava Lee #11)
The Mountain Master of Sha Tin (Ava Lee #12)
The Diamond Queen of Singapore (Ava Lee #13)
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