TIGER BALM KING: The Life and Times of Aw Boon Haw By Sam King (Times Books, $80) THIS is the stuff of which legends are made. A poor Overseas Chinese boy founds a business empire starting from the humble family kitchen in Burma and rising to wealth and fame in Asia. He builds great houses, founds newspapers, collects art treasures andhobnobs with the rich and famous in Rangoon, Singapore and Hongkong.
We have here a hero for whom the word ''colourful'' seems inadequate. Mr Aw was, to put it bluntly, a goat. Never mind his ''business trips'', which tended to favour the sort of hotel with hot and cold running concubines in every room, or his collection of - simultaneously - four wives. Even the servants (by whom he sired at least two children) were not safe.
It is one of life's sweeter ironies that a woman heads the only part of the empire founded by this male chauvinist elephant which is still in family hands.
Mr Aw was also a crude gambler, something of a bully, and burdened with an odd taste in art work. Hongkong's Tiger Balm Gardens, vestiges of which can still be visited in Tai Hang Road, are his handiwork. To be fair, so is the very handsome house in the same plot.
Take a character like this, put him through the rise and fall of the British Far East Empire, two world wars and sundry other important happenings, and you should have a fantastic book.
At least you have a plot which can carry some serious deficiencies in the writing. Here, alas, it has to.