THE FATE OF HONGKONG By Gerald Segal (Simon & Schuster, $150) SO many people have dipped their bread in the gravy formed by our problematic future that it would be churlish to begrudge Gerald Segal a thumping bestseller. He is at least a seeker after truth.
This book contains no riots, no secret agents, no nuclear meltdowns, no sloe-eyed Mata Haris, no corrupt policemen, no restaurant fires, no typhoons and no triads. It is not a Hongkong novel. It is an attempt at sober analysis.
Virtue, alas, is often boring, and Mr Segal, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, can be accused of capturing everything about Hongkong except the excitement.
More learned pens than mine will decide in other places whether this book would have been welcome if it had been published in sober hard covers by a university press.
Readers who are tempted by what appears to be a brisk paperback in a pretty cover may well find this is a book best read in bed. Then they will not fall over if they fall asleep.
This is the sort of book Henry Kissinger used to produce before Richard Nixon gave him real bombers to play with.