Foresight (Uncle Chow Tung #2) by Ian Hamilton

Paperback, 336 pgs, Pub Jan 21st 2020 by Spiderline, ISBN13: 9781487003999, Series: Uncle Chow Tung #2

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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Fate (Uncle Chow Tung #1) by Ian Hamilton

Paperback, 304 pgs, Pub Jan 22nd 2019 by Spiderline, ISBN13: 9781487003869, URL: https://houseofanansi.com/products/fate, Series: Uncle Chow Tung #1

This trilogy began as an aside to the long-running Ava Lee series by Ian Hamilton. Ava Lee, you will remember, was mentored by a much-older man called Uncle who wasn’t a relative but who became closer than blood. Before he died, they worked together collecting debts around Asia. Later she learned he held the highest-ranking post in a Hong Kong triad, as Mountain Master.

Earlier in the Ava Lee series we were treated to Uncle’s passing, replete with noisy, atonal bands playing discordantly at his funeral march. The detail in that description was lovingly crafted, introducing us to a lively, diverse triad scene that we sense has been something of a fascination for Hamilton. We revisit in greater detail here since this title begins with the death of the Mountain Master who preceded Uncle in the role.

For those readers who have despaired of office politics, this book may bring on a kind of PTSD. Triad life appears to be office politics with machetes and sub-machine guns. The leadership team all have very cool monikers, like White Paper Fan, Red Pole, and Straw Sandal, all of which operate under the Deputy Mountain Master, the Vanguard, and the Incense Master. They don’t sound scary.

This trilogy begins with Uncle Chow Tung leaving mainland China with his financée in 1959 and then jumps to 1969 where the action of this novel takes place. The action in the follow-on books appear to be spaced by a decade. Next up is Foresight.

The Chow Tung Series
Fate (Uncle Chow Tung #1)
Foresight (Uncle Chow Tung #2)
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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The Mountain Master of Sha Tin (Ava Lee #12) by Ian Hamilton

Paperback, 360 pgs, Pub July 2nd 2019 by Spiderline, ISBN13: 9781487002039, Series: Ava Lee #12

Reading several Ava Lee books in a row is intense but this series can sustain close reading and I needed to catch up on all that has been happening. I want to be ready to contemplate the TV film series, whenever it manages to present itself.

Hamilton has managed, in the last three books of the Ava Lee series, to create a parallel trilogy detailing the life of Uncle Chow Tung, Ava’s mentor for the first years of her career as a forensic accountant and debt collector. That trilogy includes Fate, Foresight and Fortune: The Lost Decades of Uncle Chow Tung.

In this installment of the Triad Years, Ava goes to Hong Kong to handle a defection among the collection of allied triads working under the aegis of the Shanghai organization of Ava’s friend, Xu. It has gotten personal for Ava, too: someone Ava has relied on to help her since Uncle’s death, Lop, has been shot and is near death.

During the course of the novel, we see Ava unusually decisive about life-and-death decisions: she plots the ambush of the defecting HK triad under the leadership of a figurehead who had once tried to kill her. At the same time she seeks to rehabilitate a drug- and alcohol- addicted film director on the mainland. It may seem she is a bundle of contradictions.

All this gang payback deepens her relationship with those that survive the fighting, and destruction is avoided. But Ava’s relationship with the Shanghai triad is more expansive even than before. The action takes place entirely in Hong Kong.

I haven’t a clue whether or not the relationships exposed herein exemplify real triad behaviors. I can only guess that if other books Hamilton has written cut close to the bone, this one may as well. If you ever wondered what hit teams are thinking while involved in shootouts, this may provide some clarity. Spoiler: there is always collateral damage.

The Chow Tung Series
Fate (Uncle Chow Tung #1)
Foresight (Uncle Chow Tung #2)
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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The Goddess of Yantai (Ava Lee #11) by Ian Hamilton

Paperback, 405 pgs, Pub Dec 4th 2018 by Spiderline, Orig Title: The Goddess of Yantai, ISBN13: 9781770899506, Series: Ava Lee #11

It is tempting to point to the many truths this series of books tell about contemporary society in China/Asia and suggest that events described are real, that just the names and locations have been changed to protect the innocent.

This particular story takes on the film industry in China, notorious for its propagandist control over messaging. We imagine what it must be like for contemporary artists and actors to thrive in such conditions. Or perhaps not so much.

A great deal is happening at once in this installment and Ava, now enamored of a beautiful movie actress, has toned down her jet-setting lifestyle to a Beijing hutong apartment and zhajiang noodles and sweet and sour soup at a streetside canteen. Plots and revenge dominate the lives of movie industry players, and illicit sex tapes of young and now-famous actors and directors threaten to take down storied careers.

Author Hamilton is working with a new editor after a successful run of eleven books in his series of Ava Lee, forensic accountant, investor and practitioner of bak mei, an ancient and deadly martial art. Things do seem a little different, just like Ava curbing her propensity to fly to several continents over the course of two days. She gets hurt in this one, too. She’s been hurt before, but it seems like she might have been a little slow in reacting to a thrust by a thug: “he was faster than he looked.”

A few loose threads were left open, but we know as the book closes what the next installment will bring and that is impelling. I noticed when I ordered the twelfth book in the series that there is a new, shorter trilogy giving the backstory of Uncle, Ava’s mentor who died in his eighties. Hamilton is looking to free himself up to imagine new lives and situations. Keep your eyes peeled for Fate, Foresight and Fortune: The Lost Decades of Uncle Chow Tung.

The Chow Tung Series
Fate (Uncle Chow Tung #1)
Foresight (Uncle Chow Tung #2)
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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The Imam of Tawi-Tawi (Ava Lee #10) by Ian Hamilton

Paperback, 365 pgs, Pub Jan 6th 2018 by Spiderline, ISBN13: 9781487002749, Series: Ava Lee #10

Entering week eight of coronavirus, I deserve a break. And one of my favorite series of all time has to be Ian Hamilton's Ava Lee books. Canadian by nationality, Chinese by race, lesbian by choice, and accountant by vocation, Ava Lee is one special protagonist.

Now in her mid-thirties, she hasn't slowed down any. She has agreed to help out an old friend-of-a-friend and ends up collaborating with a government she hasn't worked with in the past. The whole experience looks like it will end badly, but the denouement shocks us utterly. Hamilton plot lines are unique. He doesn't copy anybody and he always talks about our culture now, highlighting personalities and events that look vaguely familiar from the headlines. This contemporaneity may be why I admire his style so much.

Author Hamilton writes in his Acknowledgements that this was a difficult book to write and indeed, was not originally part of this series. That statement raises all kinds of questions in my mind, but I can unequivocally say that this story is breathtaking in the leaps it takes in plot and character development. Remember what I say about 'familiar' figures and you will forever wonder what truth there is in this heartbreaking novel. In the very next book in the series, Ava says something about "one can never be too cynical," and one fears she learned that lesson from cases like this one.

We also learn that Hamilton had such deep disagreements with his long-time editor Janie Yoon over this book that they went their separate ways. I did notice that Ava is not quite as sure of her ability to solve every problem as she has been in earlier books. She's getting older, something I appreciate since I very much am, too.

This story takes place in the Philippines and yes, it is a departure from other efforts. During the action sections of the novel, Ava barely speaks to the folks who bring her the case. We follow her, hoping there is not an iota of truth to any of it, but suspecting a story like this doesn't get conceived in a vacuum.

A very special series. Read it.

The Chow Tung Series
Fate (Uncle Chow Tung #1)
Foresight (Uncle Chow Tung #2)
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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American Carnage by Tim Alberta

Hardcover, 688 pgs, Pub July 16th 2019 by Harper, ISBN13: 9780062896445

Tim Alberta is a strange creature, a political nerd seemingly without a party. Reading him, at times he appears to have sympathies for old-time conservatives, libertarian outrage, and the broader liberal message. He is chief political correspondent for Politico but covered the 2016 election for the National Review and National Journal. He has reported for the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal as well. He came to Washington, D.C. at the end of the 2nd Bush administration, and had a front row seat at the self-described “Republican civil war.”

The most stressful part of the book revisits the horror show of the past four years—those stomach-churning moments when you wonder how any of us will survive this headless, brainless dog-and-pony show. At points in the book we hear John Boehner say “There is no Republican Party” and Alberta himself conclude, “The party itself was contracting.”

Alberta quotes several people important at one time or another to the party, giving a lot of space to the man I once held responsible--as a poster child--for the damage wrought in the past twenty years: Paul Ryan. I don’t know the man, I just know the aura that surrounded him…’youngest’ ‘brightest’ ‘budget wonk’ slavishly flipping through a dogeared copy of von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. It is enough to make you detest the folks so eager to pass on all effort (and blame) by declaring the hungriest should figure it all out while they watch. The Fall of Rome comes to mind.

One thing I appreciate is Ryan’s definition of a ‘paleocon’: isolationist, protectionist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, “kind of what you have now.”

The end of the book has Karl Rove saying the party is forever, unchangeable by Trump. Kellyanne Conway insists the GOP is now a Trumpian party, which is absurd on its face since no one except Trump can pull off that particular sleight of hand—thank god—so it will die with him. Younger members of the diaspora of the destroyed center predict a third party. Of course there will be a third party, but just how and when it will manifest will be the struggle of the future. What I wonder is how many consequential parties there will be.

What struck me about the story of this internecine GOP battle is how the regular GOP was not supportive of the argumentative and politically insane Tea Partiers that preceded Trump, and they actually hated Trump. One had to suspect it—I mean the guy is a destructive loser—but given Republicans general intransigence and lack of coherence over the years, it was difficult for an outsider to discern.

Their unwillingness to deep six Trump’s candidacy—something they could have done with an iota of moral fortitude, makes me unwilling to give them much brain space. They deserve to participate in the funeral for their party in their own way. I am surprised at my disgust at how deep the rot goes. I suspected both parties were bankrupt, but it has been confirmed by those I blamed for the problem: Paul Ryan again.

Alberta tell us a principal reason that Ryan quit is the he found it impossible to set a good example:

”The incentive structures are too warped, the allure of money and fame and self-preservation too powerful, for individuals to change the system from within.”

We get disturbing glimpses of the Democratic party, another example of the rot in the system. Eric Holder told a group of Georgia crowd that Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high,” wasn’t right. “No,” Holder said. “When they go low, we kick them.” Cripes.

The Republicans were clever with the Red Map strategy in 2010. Too clever by half, perhaps, but they did figure out a way to win a huge proportion of seats legally, if unfairly. You mean to tell me we can’t do better than the team that is so full of their own crap they couldn’t win a race fairly? It’s not money, folks. Money makes you comfortable, so in a way, that makes it is a little harder. Get ready to be uncomfortable.

Justin Amash, the Michigan congressman elected in 2010 who defected from the Republican party, is quoted in 2018 as saying

"The Tea Party is gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. There just aren’t that many Republicans now who are that concerned about spending, about debt, about big government."

If only that were true. They’re dead, they just don’t know it. Mouths with no brains. The Undead.

So in the end I feel worse about both parties and our political future. I know it will all change and there will be the dysfunction of trying to operate a new party with the corruption of the old ones. One just has to be able to stand back and assess from a position of strength, and for that we need to be smarter. When they defund your schools, throw them out. Don’t be ignorant. You’re gonna need every edge you can get.

Below please find a really interesting YouTube recording of Alberta's book promo at the Washington, D.C, bookstore Politics & Prose:

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Unrigged by David Daley

Hardcover, 320 pgs, Pub March 17th 2020 by Liveright, ISBN13: 9781631495755

David Daley wants us to feel good about ordinary citizen attempts to push back on states and national political parties for constraining our voting rights, documented in so many states across our Union.

But in doing so he also shows us how the fight in many states has become more and more bitterly partisan, particularly when savvy grassroots organizing leads to galvanizing wins…and then to resurgent attempts by a weakened party apparatus to find legal grounds to reject the changes sought, reneging on promises made.

A win in this climate is not really a win. It is a way station on a mountain path, a peak not yet crested. Perhaps that is the lesson of this endeavor: we never arrive but must fight for our democracy every. single. day.

Daley has an entertaining style that distracts little from technical, tactical battles being fought in each state. New Voter ID requirements, hurdles to ballot initiatives, restrictions on voter registration or absentee balloting, egregious gerrymandering: these are the things voters around America are worked up about, and fighting against.

Each state has different objective conditions, but in each it appears that the popular resistance is fighting a statewide battle while legislators seeking to preserve their position are receiving instructions and money from their national party. The fight is unequal in funding and reach but also unequal in ingenuity and persistence. It is heartening to see that better funding is not always the sign of a winning hand.

The gerrymandering battle fought in deep-Red Utah resulted in a win for the ballot initiative in 2018 but in 2020 the legislature forced Better Boundaries, Utah’s anti-gerrymandering group, to accept a compromise solution that allows incumbent information to be used when creating maps, and instituting the requirement that legislators do not have to accept proposed maps. This shows the weakness of ballot initiatives. They are easier to pass…and easier to repeal.

In Michigan the redistricting reform petition led by a youthful reformer profiled in the recently released documentary Slay the Dragon got onto the ballot in 2018 and passed with some 61% of the vote. Since then however, the Republican-dominated legislature first tried to defund the commission and then filed in federal court declaring the commission unconstitutional. A call went out early 2020, nonetheless, to all eligible voters in Michigan to apply to become a part of the new redistricting commission. As of this writing in April, over 6,000 citizens have responded to the call to establish a 13-member commission. Applications close in July.

Daley shows us that “when voters are given a choice, fairness wins…more than a three-quarters of the congressional seats that changed hands in 2018 were drawn by either commissions or courts. Fairer districts led not only to more competitive races, but also to election results that were responsive to a shift in public opinion.”

Missouri voters initiated a constitutional amendment mandating fair maps and the state legislature immediately proposed an amendment to disarm the citizens’ initiative. New commission requirements adopted in Ohio continue to give a role to legislators, and to require a role for judiciary if commissioners cannot agree.

At the risk of sounding despairing, I will note that I am a member of the rebellion…in Pennsylvania…to end partisan gerrymandering. We were in the last four months of an accelerating squeeze on the state legislature to pass legislation that will allow us to create an independent redistricting commission based on the California model: eleven commissioners randomly-selected from a vetted pool of regular PA citizenry. The corona virus stopped us cold.

Daley mentions Pennsylvania among his descriptions of states fighting back against legislative overreach, describing the astounding win handed to anti-gerrymandering forces by the State Supreme Court in 2018 who ruled that the 2010 congressional maps and the remedial map were badly skewed to protect ruling party interests in the state. A special master from out-of-state drew new maps used in the 2018 election for congressional districts, leveling the playing field a little. The fix was temporary and left state legislators free to do it all again in 2021.

The fight for fairer state legislative district maps continues in Pennsylvania and that is where we left it in early March when corona came calling. At least now we have time to look around at the changes elsewhere and see where we stand. Zachary Roth of the Brennan Center thinks states are winning the fight against gerrymandering, and I want it to be true. It is a never-ending battle, and we need all those who value liberty to stand with us and demand protection for our rights.

The end of Daley’s book leaves all of us reformers across the country in the same unsettled place. Daley interviews conservative, former Republican writers and pundits and comes to the conclusion that the party is so changed and susceptible to authoritarianism that it may not survive its own evolution. Our democracy probably won’t survive their evolution, either.



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