Ah ha! The most entertaining group of titles that we look at under our Hong Kong books special. Another huge area: and we've picked only the ones that, shall we say, leap out at us.
There's Hong Kong Nemesis by Allan Williams (The Book Guild, $195) with a great green dragon on the front and a great line on the cover.
'Markham was a very tough man. He needed to be. The Chinese controlling the heroin trade in Hong Kong and on the mainland were not the 'tea and cucumber sandwich' type. In fact they were very rough indeed.' Flip open the pages, and here's the compulsory sexy Chinese lady: 'She was wearing a black cheong-sam and the slit revealed a gorgeously silk-clad thigh. Her black hair was centre-parted and spilled luxuriously down her spine. She was tall for a Chinese, the top of her head reaching up to my eyes. She slinked towards me, hips rolling seductively . . . A delicious aroma of jasmine emanated from her.
'Large liquid eyes gazed out at me and her lips peeled back to reveal a gorgeous set of white teeth. She was a dazzler.' Of course, 'I have been brought here specially to meet you', she says in a 'low, melodious and slightly husky' voice.
Death of a Red Mandarin by Christopher West (Collins Crime, $195) has Inspector Wang Anzhuang of the Public Security Bureau investigating the discovery of a senior Beijing official floating in the harbour.
'Against the backdrop of a colony preparing to lower the Union Jack for the last time, Wang sets out to unravel the links between the dead man, the triads, and the burgeoning trade in pirated software.' But surprise, surprise, the senior official is not so squeaky clean despite his harbour-washing.