The Chinaman (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

Rating:
Summary: great story
Review: I enjoyed this book but was surprised to read 'Heads You Die Tails They Kill YOu' written by James Tatham and find that the opening chapter is nearly word for word the same.

Rating:
Summary: UNPUTDOWNABLE
Review: If you like edge of your seat suspense, this will do it. Most of LEATHER's books reek of authenticity and this is no exception.
The plot powers ahead at breakneck speed and you will spent your time in the company of a very believable character doing unbelievable things to people who deserve it. On of the fastes reads ever for me and it lead to the rest of LEATHER's books which gave me hours of unadulterated pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: VC meets IRA
Review: THE CHINAMAN postulates an intriguing confrontation between jungle guerilla and urban terrorism.

Nguyen Ngoc Minh was born in North Vietnam and trained as a bombmaker by the North Vietnamese Army. After his aged father was butchered by Vietcong soldiers for "being a bad Communist", Nguyen defected with his wife and two daughters to the South, where his skills as a jungle killer were perfected in service with U.S. special forces. Unable to flee when the North finally overran Saigon in 1975, Nguyen spent nearly three years in a brutal "re-education" camp. Finally released, he immediately escaped with his family, now including a new 3-year old daughter. During the perilous boat trip to Hong Kong, Nguyen's two oldest daughters were killed by marauding Thai fishermen. Now, years later in London, Nguyen is owner of the Double Happiness Take-Away. One day, his wife and remaining daughter are shredded by an IRA bomb in Knightsbridge. Vowing personal revenge against the killers after the police are unable to nab the perps, Nguyen identifies Liam Hennessy as a top advisor to the IRA's political wing, the Sinn Fein. Traveling to Belfast, Nguyen demands of Hennessy the killers' names. Liam refuses "The Chinaman" because he simply doesn't know. Not to be put off, Nguyen relentlessly hounds Hennessy with a deliberate application of escalating violence designed to coerce revelation of the desired information.

Much of THE CHINAMAN revolves around the techniques of bombmaking and, in Nguyen's case, making detonators and explosives, including nitroglycerine, from scratch. This is probably not a casual hobby you'd want to take up at home.

The action moves back and forth between Nguyen's harassment of Liam in Northern Ireland and the continuing sequence of murderous blasts in and around London detonated by the IRA bombers. The British authorities are stymied. And, as it's revealed early on, so are Hennessy and the top IRA controllers in Dublin, who see the vicious attacks as counterproductive. The London IRA cell is unauthorized and anonymous, but drawing from existing ordinance caches in the UK and obviously helped by someone high in the organization. Liam is between a rock and a hard place.

THE CHINAMAN is an engaging and tautly written tale. My chief complaint is that, one-third of the way into the book, I knew with virtual certainty who was masterminding the rogue terrorism, and I wasn't proved wrong. I don't think author Stephen Leather intended it to be that obvious. On a pickier level, I thought the character of Kerry Geraghty superflous. Kerry is the daughter of an ex-IRA assassin retired to Scotland where he runs a survival school for the rich. Liam wants the elder Geraghty, an expert stalker, to come to Northern Ireland to help corner Nguyen, who's hidden himself in the countryside surrounding Hennessy's farm. But Geraghty has a broken leg, so he instead sends Kerry, who's as proficient as her Old Man at following large game animals. Kerry's contribution to the plot is contrived at best, though it provides some interesting insight into the expertise of tracking.

Finally, Nguyen remains a sympathetic character throughout, so the ending resembles those of Gerald Seymour's excellent novels in that victory, on a personal level, often proves Pyrrhic.