The Brigadier's Wife by Chris Tao Chameleon Press, $119 A-R-C-H-I-P-E-L-A-G-O by Wes Stevens Chameleon Press, $99 A richness of writing fell from the sky during the recent Hong Kong Literary Festival, with local Chameleon Press launching several smallish books with a distinctly Asian tang. Of particular note were The Brigadier's Wife, a mystery set in Myanmar by Chris Tao, and a collection of stories, A-R-C-H-I-P-E-L-A-G-O, by Hong Kong-based Canadian teacher Wes Stevens. Tao (the pen name for an expatriate businessman living in Yangon) and Stevens are promising writers who deserve the wider attention that the literary festival seeks to encourage. The Brigadier's Wife, subtitled 'a novel of Burma', is essentially a mystery/love story written from inside Myanmar's military regime. The central character in this first-person four-hander is Zhang Xiaochen, a businessman from Yunnan province with hinted-at powerful mainland connections. Zhang's secret is that he's trying to put together a deal in Rakhine State (formerly Arakan and home of the Rohingya, a minority Muslim ethnic group) that will give China access to energy fields in the Bay of Bengal and, in effect, a warm-water port. Of course, the deal isn't being sold as such - rather, it's an infrastructure project for artificial snowfields and a ski resort. This being Myanmar, nothing is surprising. But it all takes time, as anyone doing business in Asia is aware. 'I waited,' Zhang observes. 'Waiting is good for the Burmese. They don't make appointments. They just come and wait. It's a chance to get to know everybody around the one you are waiting for. Or to show who you are. A rich man waits in traffic, but behind dark windows in cool air with the cellphone on. And making people wait is seen as a kindness. It gives them time they didn't know they had.' Tao is obviously someone with an intimate knowledge of the workings of the Myanmar regime. The Brigadier's Wife is well observed. There's nothing, really, that will offend the intelligent among them, although there's plenty they might choose to take offence at, if only because it has the ring of truth about it, and some things shouldn't be talked about. This is also a beguiling story about lost love told from four perspectives. There is Nilar, the Myanmese-Chinese wife of Brigadier General Tin Htut Oo, whose star is on the rise - 'everybody knows this one is on the inside,' Zhang notes. Zhang and Nilar, who draw - or are they being pushed? - closer together, are watched by Colonel Aye Myint, the brigadier's former commander as a young soldier fighting in Shan State and now his ruthless assistant in business matters. Secrets are currency, and the biggest secret is kept by Yadanar Khin, who serves in the brigadier's house. She thinks she's a water nat, one of the spirit entities still recognised by the otherwise devoutly Buddhist Myanmese. Tao throws in a number of other characters to push the narrative along - a curious walk-on is a woman from a powerful Hong Kong family whose main interest is to attach herself to power. 'My father used to say youth was the only commodity that, if spent wisely, is squandered.' But it all becomes rather crowded, with too large a cast for such a short book, which, at 169 pages, leaves much unexplained and is sparing with description, as if all colour has been leached out by the intensity of Myanmar's harsh sun. Tao's writing is dazzling in parts, but for those used to reading about Myanmar only from the bleak perspective of the imprisoned dissident or an oppressed people, some shade would have helped better understand the nature of the corrupt regime and the motives of those who serve it. That said, The Brigadier's Wife is an insider's view of a country where 'allegiances shift along financial lines', and love and loyalty are just chips in a high-stakes game. Taking a more impressionistic view of life in Asia is Wes Stevens, whose collection of stories suggests he has much to say, but perhaps lacks confidence in his voice. Many of the stories in this collection could have been developed beyond the handful of pages allotted them. It's a big title for such a slim offering. The hyphenation in the title is from a short story about a Malaysian-Indian boy called Anubhav, who likes to spell words, and about words and meanings. Stevens has a flair for description, and the boy's simple view of his world - which changes with the dashed dreams of his unlucky parents, from the clear waters of coral lagoons to the haze of high-rise Hong Kong - is evocative. Vestibule is a neat and tidy story that deserved more than two-and-a-bit pages, while Sugarcane Juice is too short for the big image it suggests. Such criticisms are minor, because Stevens displays obvious talent. Too Far is a powerful story told with precision, a fine piece of writing about the fire set by an arsonist at a backpacker's hostel in the Queensland town of Childers in June 2000, in which 15 people were killed. Mostly, though, it's about picking zucchinis. A-R-C-H-I-P-E-L-A-G-O offers only hints of Stevens' potential. Hopefully, he'll write more. The Brigadier's Wife is a good story deserving of a more ambitious approach, but clearly marks Tao as an astute writer who could easily command a loyal following. More from both, please.