Plot to wreck Hong Kong

Press, 27 June 1987, Page 23

Plot to wreck Hong Kong

The Mahjong Spies. By John Trenhaile. Collins, 1987, 411 pp. $29.95.

(Reviewed by

Jeremy Owen)

John Trenhaile’s latest tale goes beyond the established formula for a successful spy novel. In a sense it is more a study of the workings of the Chinese mind, than a well written and exciting thriller. He gives the reader a fascinating insight into the pragmatic attitudes of those governing the world’s most populated nation and the complicated ties of family loyalty that still dominate traditional Chinese life. Trenhaile has chosen his characters well, and his long years spent studying the Chinese language have obviously helped him to flesh out some of his characters into credible personalities. The story is set in Hong Kong, and in a refreshing break from Soviet spy versus American spy, Trenhaile has pitched the KGB against its closer and probably more ruthless adversary — the Chinese Intelligence Service. The scenario itself is believable.

Anxious that the commercial and economic balance of power in Asia is not altered by China’s take over of Hong Kong in 1997, the KGB leadership hatches a plot to wreck the financial foundations of the city so that Beijing will inherit only an empty shell from the British. Standing in the way of the Russians is the uneasy and forced alliance of the Chinese Intelligence Service’s crack Mahjong Brigade and the novel’s central character, bank magnate Simon Young. Married to a mainland Chinese, Young is an Englishman from a family of influential Hong Kong taipans, whose economic future seems destined to follow the fate of British colonial rule. The result is a complex, yet readable novel which moves through the colourful alleys of Hong Kong, Beijing, and Singapore, to the brothels and boardrooms of the rich, and finally to a small Chinese village virtually untouched by the centuries.