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More reviews by Wayne E. Yang
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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The Secret Agent by Francine Mathews
Stefani Fogg is a graduate of two top-notch American universities, "a pretty woman with the face of a pixie," but "bored off her nut" as an international fund manager. It doesn't take much for the head of a "risk management" firm to convince her to trade finance for a life of cloak and dagger.
Fogg is asked to get to know the handsome Olympic skier Max Roderick, who is grandson of none other than Jack Roderick, the former OSS agent who moved to Bangkok four decades earlier to become the "Silk King" of Thailand. Jack wants to know how and why his grandfather one day mysteriously disappeared into the jungle, and he wants to lay claim to the Thai teak house and its treasures that he says has been left for him in his grandfather's will, a claim that the Thai government disputes.
Is Max Roderick a murderer or has he been framed when a young Thai girl is found dead in his hotel bed?
FRANCINE MATHEWS is a former foreign policy analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the writer of six "Jane Austen murders" under the pseudonym Stephanie Barron. Indeed, THE SECRET AGENT, despite its fair share of European ski chases and Southeast Asia, jungle-wandering commandos, often reads more like a mystery in the way it unfolds through detail.
THE SECRET AGENT follows her successful first espionage thriller The Cutout. Mathews skillfully tells two stories, weaving between Stefani's hunt for the truth about Max and frequent flashbacks to Jack Roderick's adventures in Thailand, which possibly comprise the most credible and engrossing scenes in the novel.
The Jack Roderick story is very loosely based on the real disappearance from Thailand of Jim Thompson. The lush descriptions suggest that Mathews was conscientious in her research, though her caricatures of corrupt Thai officials might put off some Asian readers. Additionally, the flashbacks might throw off thriller genre fans who like their stories more straightforward and unadorned, but the prose is mostly very good, at times excellent enough to suggest that we need to keep an eye on where Mathews will take her next literary thriller.
Wayne E. Yang
27/09/2002
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Wayne E. Yang is based in New York, where he lives with his wife and two children. His web site is www.wayneyang.com. |
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