Black Dragon: A Novel - Hardcover

An American intelligence officer investigates the sordid death of the President's new drug czar, learning, in the process, how enduring are the mysteries of the Orient and how rickety the democratic structures of the West--in a thriller from the Canadian author of Hard Target, Maxwell's Train, etc. Defense Department spy Philip Dane quickly concludes that he has landed in very sticky stuff when he reluctantly accepts an assignment to identify the men who caught America's top drug cop in flagrante and stoned to the gills, and who then tortured and murdered him. The assassins marked their victim with the Chinese characters for Black Dragon. Dane learns that Black Dragon is the name of a spectacularly successful international crime syndicate headed by elderly, blue-eyed James Chang of London and Hawaii. But Mr. Chang and his gang seem to be victims themselves. Persons unknown are planning to lay waste Mr. Chang's assemblage of criminal bigwigs, a meeting he has organized to bring sense to the chaotic drug market. Dane's investigation takes him to the West Coast and an encounter with a very attractive Chinese American who may or may not be a totally honest agent of the FBI. As he rolls back stones, Dane learns all about the Changs and often finds that the bugs scuttling from the light are inscrutable Occidentals. Smooth, literate, and thoroughly cynical. Well done. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When Gen. William Sloane Hawkesworth, senior military adviser to the president's drug czar, turns up murdered on a senator's yacht following an apparent opium spree, the Defense Intelligence Agency wants a quick and quiet cover-up, and brings Col. Phillip Dane out of semi-retirement to assess the affair. Dane stumbles into a minefield of corrupt intelligence dealings stretching back to WW II, when the now-powerful alliance between certain off-the-book military operatives and one Chinese crime syndicate drew first blood. Hyde ( Hard Target ) exhaustively documents the corporate structure of the syndicate, called Black Dragon, and the deadly machinations fueling the transition from one Shan Chu, or Dragon Head, to his surprise successor. Compensating for the absence of dramatic complexity in the characters are their meticulously supplied histories, as well as the paranoia suffusing each of the ardently detailed scenes. Hyde's occasional descriptions of graphic sex, for example, are bland compared with those of the movement of laundry on an ocean liner or the installation of an offshore intelligence network on a Caribbean cay. His dark, stately style suits his characters well, and the sheer multitude of pieces he fits into his puzzle inspires awe.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.