Greg
Ballard #1 (1969): “The Temple Dogs Guard My Fate” by
Dennis Sinclair. Ballard, a newspaperman, was once married to Yuk Kuan, the
daughter of a retired Chinese general now living in Hong Kong. He had met her
at the university, and they were married for six months until she caught him in
bed with another woman. Returning to Hong Kong, she doesn’t see him for four
years, but suddenly he’s here on assignment for his paper, and he wants to
marry her again. In truth, at first he was using her as a reason to be in Hong
Kong. His true mission was to penetrate China and rescue a Russian held
prisoner. For Ballard is also a member of Survival,
an amateur spy organization seeking to stop deadly wars in, if possible
non-violent ways. Scientists who had created the atomic bomb wanted to bring
something good for the evil they gave the world, and their solution was Survival. Now that he has reestablished
contact with Yuk Yuan, he really wants to marry her again, but she tells him
early on that her life – and fate – is guarded by the stone dogs in her garden
that have no eyes. She tells him the story of the Temple Dogs early on, so we
can guess what the outcome is going to be. This was really an interesting
story. The Russian engineer being held prisoner has nothing to do with nuclear
weapons and, in fact, he is also a member of Survival – but he doesn’t mind being a little lethal when he needs
to be. The Chinese plan on using him as a plant for mass murder, when China
releases poisoned water into the Hong Kong water system. With the American also
on hand, they plan to add Ballard to the list of scapegoats, blaming Russia and
America for the mass killings. Ballard is big and tough, but when it comes to a
mercy killing, he can’t do it. The
Russian takes care of the situation. At one point they discuss Susie Wong,
which was neat. This was the first for four novels featuring Greg Ballard and Survival. He would write two more 1976,
and the last one in 1977. The concept was neat; I mean an amateur non-violent
spy organization with no government affiliation. And though Ballard may be
non-violent, but many of his contacts are. They use a Pakistani towards the end,
and he loves to fight and kill.
Earl Norman
The Earl Norman books are becoming extremely rare, and publishers don’t seem to be interested in reprinting the series. The only way some of us may ever have all the stories is for collectors to scan and type the stories into PDF to swap with other collectors. I have already completed PDFs of HANG ME IN HONG KONG and KILL ME IN ROPPONGI. I am working on KILL ME IN YOKOSUKA. If other collectors would do the same for some of the other books, we could eventually have PDFs of all ten books. Why not help? I can be contacted at fadingshadows40@gmail.com
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