The General of Tiananmen Square by Ian Hamilton

(18. - 1307.) The General of Tiananmen Square by Ian Hamilton - As noted in my review of The Sultan of Sarawak, the previous book in the Ava Lee series, I was eager to know what happened in the next book of the series as it would involve the movie Ava’s lover, Pang Fai, made about the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Communist China has attempted to obliterate what happened on June 4, 1989 from history.

The book has a wonderful opening as the movie titled Tiananmen is screened. The first screening will be at 7:30 in the morning for critics and film industry people at the Cannes film festival. The public premiere will be that evening. While all involved in the film are convinced it is a masterpiece all are anxious to find out the reaction of the critics.

In the movie Silvana is the mother of a young student demonstrator and Pang is a Chinese army general. They meet just outside the Square.

There is relief for Ava and Pang when they are told the critics stood and applauded at the end of the film. 

In the evening the 2,300 in attendance rise to their feet at the end of the screening shouting the name of the director, Lau Lau.

The movie wins the Palme d’Or.

Mr. Mo Ming, the chairman of the China Movie Syndicate, has to approve every movie made in China and any foreign movie a distributor wants to show in China. He has a bitter history with Ava and Pang. He is furious with the movie and threatens all involved with the movie.

The Chinese government’s determination to quash any forms of information about what happened on Tinanmen Square includes the Syndicate.

A distributor is found but immediately problems arise with distribution.

Ava’s mentor, the late Uncle, comes to Ava in a dream and advises her not to poke the bear that is China.

Chinese security reaches outside China to detain Chen.

For someone as acute as Ava, she realizes late that the careful legal concealment of the funding of the movie by Three Sisters can all be undone if an insider, perhaps under torture, is questioned by Chinese security forces.

Ava’s negotiations are interesting for she can neither use violence nor the threat of violence to motivate the other side to agree to her terms. Her triad connections cannot help her. It is a pure negotiation with limited knowledge about the number the other side would accept to make a deal. I was reminded of Harvey Strosberg. He is a skilled Ontario litigator with the knack of determining the “magic number” that will make a deal work for both sides.

Ava is willing to have more flexibility than usual in her negotiations. She is determined to make the deal.

The last third of the book involves her determination to set aside a binding legal agreement in America. Ava has infrequently ventured into the United States.

The American dispute takes her into the American court system. Hamilton writes well about the court application. I will decline to discuss the legal weaknesses in his depiction of the legal action.

Ava’s scheming, done under the pseudonym of Jennie Kwong, is clever. Unfortunately, she is ignoring Uncle’s advice in favour of helping her friends and lover and satisfying her desire for a great movie telling the truth about China to be screened around the world.

As usual, Hamilton had me racing through the pages to find out what was going to happen in the entanglements concerning Tiananmen.

In recent books of the series the conclusions had been relatively straight forward. I found the ending of General Tiananmen totally unexpected. It was a cliff hanger that sent me searching the next day for the next book in the series. I had to know what happened next!

****

Hamilton, Ian - (2012) - The Water Rat of Wanchai; (2013) - The Disciple of Las Vegas; (2014) - The Wild Beasts of Wuhan; (2014) - The Red Pole of Macau; (2016) - The Scottish Banker of Surabaya; (2018) - The Two Sisters of Borneo; (2019) - The King of Shanghai; (2020) - The Princeling of Nanjing; (2020) - Fate; (2020) - Foresight; (2021) - Fortune; (2022) - Finale; (2022) - Body Counts in Fictional Gang Wars (Ian Hamilton, John Grisham and Don Winslow); (2023) - The Couturier of Milan; (2023) - The Iman of Tawi-Tawi; (2024) - The Goddess of Yantai; (2025) The Mountain Master of Sha Tin; (2025) - The Diamond Queen of Singapore; (2026) - The Sultan of Sarawak

The Mountains Have a Secret by Arthur Upfield

(13. - 1302.) The Mountains Have a Secret by Arthur Upfield (1948) - Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte travels to the Grampians, the mountainous area a few hundred kilometres northwest of Melbourne. Two young women were hiking in the area when they disappeared five months earlier. An extensive search was fruitless.

Bony takes a new approach to investigating the disappearance. He pretends to be on holiday. Another edition of the book is actually called Bony Takes a Holiday. As John Parkes he raises 10,000 sheep on 100,000 acres in New South Wales.

Bony gets a room at the Baden Park Hotel near where the women were last seen.

The Simpson family run the hotel. Joseph is a senior in a wheelchair and a tart tongue. Bony sees he may be an invalid but has his mind intact. His son, James “Jim”, considers him addled. His daughter, Ferris, is a part of the background.

The Benson family of Baden Park Station are the local aristocracy. Wealthy, they drive a Rolls-Royce, they are raising the Grampian strain of sheep. The sheep draw premium prices.

On Bony’s arrival at the Hotel a “great yellow-breasted cockatoo” greets him with a “What abouta drink?”

He accepts the offer. The Simpson family is welcoming and the Hotel is spotless. Bony does find James unusual, for a rural Australian hotel, in his formal clothing and expensive Buick.

Adding to the mystery is that a young police detective, Price, spent some time investigating after the search ended. He was found shot to death in his car over 20 miles from where the women vanished.

Bony is a patient man. After eight days at the hotel he continues to observe and study. 

Bony has casually but thoroughly explored the area around the hotel. Jim and Shannon keep a close eye on him. The lack of physical clues to the women is suspicious to Bony, an experienced tracker.

He spends hours examining foot by foot an era of quartz shingle where a vehicle had turned around. Eventually he finds a ruby brilliant.

Bony has a dread of the dead. From his indigenous ancestry there is fear of the dead that can overwhelm the living.

What could be going on in this remote area that requires such an elaborate coverup? Bony struggles to find the reason.

What I enjoyed most in the book involved Bony in the bush using his skills as a tracker and a bushman. His ability to decipher events in the bush from what he sees and hears is extraordinary.

The Hollywood ending dramatically breached my credulity. Bony is not an action hero. The bizarre conclusion left me disappointed in the book.

****

Upfield, Arthur - (2011) - Cake in the Hat Box; (2011) - The Widows of Broome (2011) - "U" is for Arthur Upfield; (2011) - The Bushman Who Came Back; (2012) - The Will of the Tribe; (2012) - The Battling Prophet; (2012) - "U" is for Arthur W. Upfield; (2013) - The Bone is Pointed; (2013) - Q & A with Stan Jones on Nathan Active and Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte - Part I and Part II; (2013) - "U" is for Death of a Swagman (1945); (2015) - Death of a Lake; (2015) - The Clue of the New Shoe (1952) and Split Point Lighthouse; (2026) - Sinister Stones

Sinister Stones by Arthur Upfield

(11. - 1300.) Sinister Stones by Arthur Upfield (1954) - Over 3,000 km. northeast of Perth, Australia is the fictional Agar’s Lagoon. The small community is ringed by a thousand tons of glass bottles. It is too expensive to ship out empty bottles.

Detective Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte, part white/part indigenous, is present because of a faulty airplane engine. He is the only guest at the hotel.

The only police officer, Constable Martin Stenhouse, is away on a distant patrol.

The Kimberley Ranges of mountains are a wild and beautiful land. The isolation is immense.

Bony observes a sunset:

The quilt of the valley was sinking beneath a purple overlay. The sun stood on its edge on a ridge and then vanished. The purple darkened to indigo blue, and the summits of the range about the two men brightened from red to gold. The red monoliths and the cross-barrier of rock sank into the blue of the valley, and soon the summits were like carved mahogany pillars supporting a diamond-studded roof.

Trucker, Sam Laidlaw, is hauling ten tons of stores from Wyndham on the coast to stations south of Agar’s Lagoon. He sometimes reaches 12 miles per hour on the rough track.

Sam finds Stenhouse’s jeep stopped beside the track with crows atop its canopy. Inside, Stenhouse is seated behind the steering wheel dead with a bullet wound in his chest.

There is no sign of Stenhouse’s indigenous tracker, Jacky Musgrave. (I will use indigenous rather than Upfield’s descriptions from the 1950’s for indigenous Australians in the book.) Musgrave is from a group that still lives wild rather than at a station.

Sam immediately goes to Agar’s Lagoon to advise of Stenhouse’s death.

The authorities swiftly dispatch Bony, the local doctor, Sam and a local yardman to investigate. On arrival they determine Stenhouse was shot once but there is a clumsy attempt with a second shot to disguise the first shot. 

Another officer, Senior Constable Irwin, and two indigenous trackers, Larry and Charlie, arrive from the coast to help Bony. 

Both the whites and indigenous use the air to communicate. There is wireless at the stations. The indigenous use “smokes” which are smoke signals (plumes of smoke that have gaps and/or involve multiple fires) that can be seen far away.

Bony and Irwin form a team and start to visit stations. Stenhouse was not where he had said he had planned to be on his patrol.

Bony’s inquiries focus as much on the missing Musgrave as upon the murdered Stenhouse.

The Musgrave wild indigenous are also searching for Jacky Musgrave. They have their own form of justice.

Bony visits the Breen family. Three massive brothers and their beautiful younger sister, Kimberley, live at the station. Kimberley has fine china for tea and fine clothes to wear for infrequent visitors. She serves slabs of a fruitcake which is stored in a hatbox.

Bony pays close attention to indigenous lore and is a constant observer of the land and air.

I loved how Bony and an indigenous tracker, Larry, searched through the wild country looking for signs of what happened. They combine sight, smell and feel with a deep knowledge of the reaction of wild animals and birds to disturbances. 

Their tracking skills are lost to our era with our almost utter dependence on electronics.

At the same time Bony extracts information through easy casual conversation often while having a cigarette he has rolled. When Bony pauses conversation to roll a cigarette there is an unsettling amount of time for tension to build in the person with whom he is talking.

I was disappointed when Bony broke the law to gain evidence. With his skills and determination he could have solved the case by following the law.

Indigenous justice appears scientifically unreliable but it has worked for many generations.

While there is limited regard for many indigenous people in the book there is great regard for Bony.

There is genuine respect for the tracking and other bush skills of the indigenous.

I thought Sinister Stones was a brilliant book, one of Updike’s best.

****

Upfield, Arthur - (2011) - Cake in the Hat Box; (2011) - The Widows of Broome (2011) - "U" is for Arthur Upfield; (2011) - The Bushman Who Came Back; (2012) - The Will of the Tribe; (2012) - The Battling Prophet; (2012) - "U" is for Arthur W. Upfield; (2013) - The Bone is Pointed; (2013) - Q & A with Stan Jones on Nathan Active and Napoleon "Bony" Bonaparte - Part I and Part II; (2013) - "U" is for Death of a Swagman (1945); (2015) - Death of a Lake; (2015) - The Clue of the New Shoe (1952) and Split Point Lighthouse

Field Gray by Philip Kerr

(12. - 1301.) Field Gray by Philip Kerr - Instability is a way of life for Bernie Gunther. In 1954, at the end of If the Dead Rise Not, he was in Havana with a good job, a nice apartment, a nicer car and some money. I had hopes he had found stability. It was not to be.

In Field Gray, the colour of WW II German uniforms, Bernie is taking a boat to Haiti to escape Cuban Military Intelligence Lieutenant Quevedo who wanted Bernie to spy on his boss, Meyer Lansky. 

A very successful brothel owner, Doña Marina, induces Bernie to take with him a fiery beautiful revolutionary / part-time prostitute for the cause, Melba Marerro, who has killed Police Captain Balart.

On their way they are stopped by the U.S. Navy. Marerro shoots an American officer. During subsequent interrogation in Guatánamo Gunther’s attitude, caustic words and general obstinacy gain him a beating.

After a short stop in New York he is flown to Germany and placed in Landsberg prison. He is to face his past.

Two American Army lawyers question him extensively about his time in the “RSHA - which was the security office created by the mergers of the SD (the security service of the SS), the Gestapo and the Kripo in 1939.”

They have a huge amount of information on his life and the actions of the various German units in Russia in 1941, especially the Sonderkommando who killed and killed and killed. Pacification is a euphemism. 

Bernie starts talking about being in a police battalion in Russia in 1941. He was the Captain in charge of a unit that killed 30 captured NKVD who had just killed 2,000 - 3,000 prisoners, including German prisoners of war. The executed NKVD were killed not because of a military directive but because Gunther and his unit decided they deserved to die.

General Nebe, formerly Bernie’s boss in the Berlin police, sees Bernie after Bernie has complained about watching soldiers murder Jews, including old women. It is a chilling conversation as Nebe will kill Jews so he can maintain his current position of authority and be ready to “move against Hitler when the time is right”. It is pointed out to Bernie that the NKVD unit his unit killed were all Jews.

The conversation, it is more a discussion than an interrogation, with the American lawyers is a fascinating exploration on the early days of the Holocaust of the rationalizations,the justifications, the choices, the righteousness, the willing collaborators, the perceived moral superiority of the victors and regrets. It is disturbing and enlightening as it examines the experiences of those directly involved as they stoutly maintain they were following orders.

The Americans avoid Bernie’s question on why he is being pursued when the Americans have been releasing SS who killed thousands  after less than 10 years imprisonment.

The CIA steps in and their questions take him back to 1931 when the Communists and the Nazis are killing each other on the streets of Berlin. I have always believed Kerr’s historic summaries were accurate. My belief was confirmed when he discussed Hans Litten cross-examining Hitler in the Eden Dance Palace case over the Nazi fiction that Hitler was “Herr Law and Order”. Having read a biography of Litten and a portion of Litten’s cross-examination Kerr was faithful to the facts.

Bernie is taken forward to 1940 when Reinhard Heydrich, possibly the most ruthless Nazi, calls again on Bernie. When Heydrich actually wants a reliable “honest” policeman he sends for Bernie. For all his stubbornness even Bernie recognizes the danger and futility of even slightly resisting Heydrich. The mission will take Bernie into the recently conquered France. He bears a letter from Heydrich that requires every German officer to transfer any soldier to Bernie’s command. 

Heydrich arranges for a custom made field gray SD uniform so that Bernie will look good in France. While it is not black Bernie is uncomfortable wearing it for he felt “as if I’d signed a contract in blood with hitler himself”.

I thought I had gotten used to all the surprising places Bernie stays in his chaotic striking life when I was stunned to read the Americans had put him in cell 7, the cell, more a nice room, that Hitler had occupied after the failed putsch in 1923. I was further amazed when Bernie dreamed of a conversation with Hitler about what Bernie was doing in France.

A third set of Americans question Bernie about the war.

Late in the war he was stationed on the northern frontlines of the Eastern Front. He tells them of the terrible vengeance exacted upon German civilians by the Ivans advancing through East Prussia. He was fighting as a regular soldier. He is captured and sent to Russia as a prisoner of war.

Bernie makes a tour of the prison camps, jails, detention centres and prisons of all the major combatant nations of WW II except for the British and Italans. The worst are the Russian, though not by much.

Multiple intelligence services want Bernie to work for them. His core integrity attracts them. That integrity also compels him to refuse offers despite often brutal consequences for him.

Continuing the dizzingly round of places and countries, Bernie ends up in Germany at Friedland in 1954 when 1,000 prisoners of war return from Russia. Bernie is officially there as a representative of the VdH, an organization who assists returning German soldiers. Kerr describes the terribly thin men as resurrected from their graves. In their “battered field gray” they fill the platform of the train station.

Kerr continues his seeming effortless transitions between the present and multiple different earlier times of Bernie’s life. The twisty end was worthy of a Jeffery Deaver novel. 

Bodies are piling up around Bernie. He always has a reason to satisfy his mind if not his conscience. On a cover blurb he is described by Philip Caputo “as the most anti-heroic of anti-heroes”. I like the description but I would still want Bernie at my side if I was facing a bad situation.

****

Kerr, Philip – (2004) - Dark Matter; (2016) - March Violets; (2016) - The Pale Criminal; (2016) - A German Requiem; (2016) - Berlin Police and the Holocaust - Part I and Part II;  (2016) - Comparing Serial Killers in Three Totalitarian States; (2023) - The One From the Other; (2023) - A Quiet Flame; (2024) - If the Dead Rise Not

The Sultan of Sarawak by Ian Hamilton

(10. - 1299.) The Sultan of Sarawak by Ian Hamilton - Ava Lee is enjoying a quiet interlude in her life with her lover, Pang Fai, in Taiwan where Fai is starring in what promises to be an epic movie on the crushing of student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Their serenity ends when Ava is told that the Three Sisters lumberyard in Sarawak has been destroyed in an explosion and subsequent fire. The manager, Jamilah Daeng, was badly burned. She dies from her burns.

The financial loss is in the millions.

Ava travels immediately to Sarawak. She finds an almost feudal state where Sulemin Chong controls the lucrative illegal logging, the police, the media and the government. He does not like competition.

Following the principles engrained in her by Uncle, her mentor and first partner, Ava establishes contacts in Sarawak to find out what happened.

Her most engaging contact was Douglas Brooke (my bias towards lawyers as characters supports my conclusion). He is a long time lawyer whose dissolute life is affecting his law office. I was disappointed he would wear a suit jacket to the office with a stain on the shoulder. Despite the fashion faux pas Ava hires him.

I was glad Brooke proved trustworthy. He provides Ava with information on how Chong dominates Sarawak and how there is no independent judicial system.

Ava and her business associates get nowhere with the police on their investigation of the attack on the business.

When two men attack Ava and her group intent on intimidation and a beating Ava blows up. Using her bak mei martial arts skills she swiftly disables the attackers.

The insurer refuses to pay on the Three Sisters policy because of the police conclusion that Jamilah caused the explosion.

The Chong family have made a dangerous enemy in Ava.

Ava returns to the mindset of her earlier profession of regaining stolen money from difficult adversaries. She realizes it is almost impossible to take on the Chong family in Sarawak.

Sulemin Chong’s daughter and son-in-law, Laila and Martin Bowles live a luxurious life in Hong Kong. The Chong family has major investments there.

The Chong family has limited influence in Hong Kong. 

Ava has resources and contacts and influence in Hong Kong.

She decides she is not content with regaining the losses the Three Sisters have incurred in Sarawak. She will exact retribution.

Ava’s plan utilizes her accounting skills and her triad contacts to develop attacks upon the Chong family interests.

Hamilton continues to create interesting plots for Ava. She has been drifting away from developing her business interests and is ever more intent on pursuing her relationship with Fai.

It will be interesting to read what happens when the Tiananmen Square movie is released. Beijing will not be happy.

****

Hamilton, Ian - (2012) - The Water Rat of Wanchai; (2013) - The Disciple of Las Vegas; (2014) - The Wild Beasts of Wuhan; (2014) - The Red Pole of Macau; (2016) - The Scottish Banker of Surabaya; (2018) - The Two Sisters of Borneo; (2019) - The King of Shanghai; (2020) - The Princeling of Nanjing; (2020) - Fate; (2020) - Foresight; (2021) - Fortune; (2022) - Finale; (2022) - Body Counts in Fictional Gang Wars (Ian Hamilton, John Grisham and Don Winslow); (2023) - The Couturier of Milan; (2023) - The Iman of Tawi-Tawi; (2024) - The Goddess of Yantai; (2025) The Mountain Master of Sha Tin; (2025) - The Diamond Queen of Singapore

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

(9. - 1298.) Slow Horses by Mick Herron - Slow Horses is a great name for the start of the Slough House novels, a series I wish I had started earlier.

The “slow horses” are the deemed misfits of MI5 exiled to a shabby office building, Slough House. The elite “dogs” reside at Regent’s Park in a sleek modern building. 

Becoming a slow horse appears more mischance than incompetence in the spy game. The consequences of mistakes are random depending almost on the whim of superiors.

In a gripping opening River Cartwright desperately attempts to stop a bomber on the London underground. He fails by seconds. Only after my heart had calmed abit did I find out it was a training exercise. He is sent to Slough House to analyze transcripts of surveillance tapes and phone calls. His frustration is high for he believes Spider Webb provided him with a wrong description of the bomber. He was not dismissed from the Service because his grandfather, the O.B. (Old Bastard), was a high ranking member and still has a degree of influence.

Herron is among the few writers I know who can create a plausible driving scenario with ever increasing tension and then equally credibly shatter a reader’s assumptions. 

He drives the narrative steadily.

The slow horses fill their days with tedious administrative tasks knowing the Service would be grateful if they would just resign.

Their morning tedium is interrupted by a video on the BBC showing a hooded young man holding up the day’s newspaper with an accompanying message;

we cut his head off forty-eight hours

Written in 2010 the book is close in time to the 2005 suicide bombings on the London Underground by Islamic terrorists.

Regent’s Park has no need for the slow horses as it pursues the terrorists holding the boy. At Regent’s Park, Dinah “Lady Di” Travener, confidently advises a high level meeting that they will save the boy.

At the same time River is caught up in the delivery of a copied memory stick to Regent’s Park. Another slow horse, Sidonie “Sid” Baker, has cleverly created a diversion in a coffee shop allowing her to copy journalist Robert Hobden’s memory stick.

Since no one can remember the last operation conducted by a slow horse, River is convinced there is a significance beyond spying on a journalist.

The ripples from that modest operation involve the slow horses more and more and more in the investigation of the terrorist operation.

The leader of the slow horses, Jackson Lamb, ultimately proves himself capable of being far more than a manager of the slow horses.

Initially, I thought the slow horses a sad lot whose depression over their dismal status had isolated them. Few have friends or family or community. At moments I thought they were consumed by self-pity.

Yet, when action is thrust upon them the slow horses prove ready.

Herron had more real surprises in this book than many purported twisty works of fiction. The twists were brilliantly timed and Herron did not feel the need for a twisty ending.

I do not know if it was an accurate depiction of the British intelligence agency but it felt very real to me.

I am going out to look for the next book in the series.