Macao Mayhem

Crown #2. Macao Mayhem by Terry Harknett. Hong Kong is a hot bed of secrets, and a new gang is using prostitutes and call girls to gather information. Senior Superintendent John Crown and his partner, karate champ Chang Po are assigned the case. When a call girl Crown had helped before turns up dead, they quickly discover there may be something bigger in the works. It’s a case that may involve the Chinese and an American diplomat. The investigation takes them from Hong Kong to Macao. This is the second of the three novels featuring the pair of Hong Kong investigators. Although the third novel is the best in the series, this one has a lot of humor, but not so much of the karate action. Still, a fun story with lots of other action. 

Hard Latitudes

Mike Travis #4: “Hard Latitudes” by Baron R. Birtcher. May Ling is raped and held captive as a sex slave in Hong Kong. Unknown to her, this will culminate in violence and death as events move to the US, where she is to be a pawn in a deadly duel between the Chinese and a pharmaceutical giant.

Mike Travis Kamahale Van de Groot gave up his name and position in the Van de Groot family-empire to become his own man. After a career as a police detective in L.A., he moved to Kona, Hawaii to live on his sailboat. But trouble continues to follow him. His brother is his latest problem. Valden Van de Groot is a predator of women, and he’s in a mess again. It seems he picked up a 17-year-old girl in an L.A. hotel lounge, and their bedroom activity was videotaped. Now someone is blackmailing him for three million dollars, and Valden wants his brother to take care of the problem.

After taking care of the L.A. problem in the first half of the book, Mike Travis returns to Hawaii, where he encounters the pharmaceutical giant of industry, Phillip Lennox and his son, J.R. Someone has kidnapped J.R.’s son, and Phillip’s grandson, and J.R. wants Mike to find him. Now the three stories come together, as the boat May Ling is on flounders in the sea, and the crew has abandoned ship. It’s being towed to Hawaii, and may prove disastrous to Phillip Lennox’s empire, and Mike Travis fills in all the blanks from his brother’s blackmail to the child’s kidnapping, and the Chinese connection with Lennox’s pharmaceuticals and the tragic story of May Ling.

A very complicated plot that all comes together in the end. This story is well written, and keeps our interest with believable action, and memorable characters.

Assault On Ming

Cabot Cain #2: “Assault On Ming” by Alan Caillou (Alan Samuel Lyle-Smythe). Cain is hired by an ex mobster, now going straight, whose daughter has been addicted to heroin by one of his old partners in the business. Now his daughter is missing, and he wants Cain to find her before Ming kills her. All may not be as it first appears. Ming’s headquarters is in Macao, and he has a large Chinese organization controlling the drug and smuggling in the East. Thinking that the girl is after Ming for what he has done to her, Cain hires an American prostitute in Hong Kong to impersonate her, hoping to draw Ming out of hiding to capture the bait. The prostitute comes with her own bodyguard, a small Chinese martial arts expert named Mai. Things immediately go haywire, and the prostitute is captured before Cain can put his plans in effect, and he and Mai now have to rescue the prostitute, and still find the missing girl.  This was another topnotch story featuring Cabot Cain, a giant of a man in size, strength, and education. Although the author still hasn’t got his size straightened out. In issue #1, he went from 6’9” and 240 pounds one minute, to 6’7” and 210 pounds the next. In this novel, he’s 6’7” and 200 pounds. The actual description of thick legs, arms, chest, and shoulders sound more like the 240 that we first were told. But the stories are fantastic, and I hope we see more of Mai in future stories. She added some nice karate and judo action to this one.