Home-grown hero
As Andrew Adams gazes across a Victoria Harbour crowded with clipper ships, frigates, brigs and sloops-of-war, he fixes his eye on a magnificent Chinese junk, and hatches the prank that will prove a catalyst to two weeks of havoc and heroism. The adventures of this latter-day Indiana Jones will leave him fleeing for his life through the town of Victoria, bring him face to face with the perils of the pirate-infested waters of the Pearl River, and finally fix him a date with death at Hangman's Point.
Welcome to Hong Kong, 1857, where life is cheap and danger and action lurk around every corner. Like all the best action heroes, our indestructible protagonist overcomes incredible odds to avenge wrongdoing, ignoring his own safety. He will defeat pirates, slave traders, and the British justice system. Yet his weakness for the fairer sex comes closest to causing his downfall.
Women just can't get enough of this loveable rogue. Hillary Clinton would approve - at least in public - of the way his 'non-legal wife' Anne, barmaid at the Bee Hive tavern, stands by her man, while this 19th-century American ne'er-do-well fuels the passions of Daffany Tarrant, wife of a rich British tea trader. Neither is he immune to the allure of 'celestials', and Adams risks everything to help his former lover, Tanka girl Dai-tai. The novel is peppered with well-defined characters from all walks of life. Dean Barrett lays bare the brutal realities of the lives of the underdogs, the Chinese slaves, prisoners and coolies, as well as the pampered, all-powerful mandarins and the British upper classes.
We enter the devilish mind of Monkey Chan, the opium-addicted bakery worker who devises a dastardly plan to rid the city of its 'foreign devils' in one fell swoop, and follow the tragic misfortune of Sammy, the Tarrants' wall-eyed punkah-puller. There are sketches of those who make up the rich tapestry of Hong Kong, from prostitutes to pawnbrokers, police to pirates. It would be just another potboiler a la James Clavell, but Barrett's extensive research sets this novel apart: as well as a ripping adventure story, it is an intimately drawn historical portrait.
But according to Barrett, all this failed to attract the major publishers he approached, who couldn't see a market for the book. He opted to publish it through his own company, a decision which slightly demeans a novel that, had it been written by a more well-known author, could perhaps have secured a major deal.
Whether or not the publishers were right, Barrett's historical integrity should have strong appeal for local audiences. He claims to have meticulously checked many true incidents from Hong Kong's early colonial past.
A chapter at the end of the book sorts myth from fact. Some readers might be surprised to learn that the baker's foiled attempt to rid the city of its foreign population by putting arsenic in the bread is a piece of history. The slaughter by pirates of the crew of a postal steamer, the Thistle, is another; and the horrors of the coolie slave trade to South America are also, sadly, all too true.
Barrett brings us the mundane - the type of matches used, the cries of street hawkers, the fashions of the day - as well as the colour essential to the drama: the weaponry, the ships, the tools of torture and death. Made-up events bolster the factual incidents and fictional characters rub shoulders with real ones.
Whereas a plan to recapture Hong Kong by a celestial army and the gripping courtroom drama that forms the latter part of the novel are figments of the author's imagination, the suspense they offer is real enough.
Hangman's Point BY Dean Barrett Village East Books $195
