HarperNorth paperback edition - 2024
Here we are again - my biannual 'fix' with Ben Hope, courtesy of Scott Mariani. This is Hope's twenty-ninth outing and I see that another one is due on 7th November. Having flirted with the 15th century in his last book, The Tudor Deception, Mariani returns to the present day. This time the story is set in China, a land so vast and diverse, so historically and culturally rich, that it's virtually impossible (at least for me) to encompass adequately in a book like this. The author also admits, in his Author's Note at the end, that he has not travelled to the country, which is unusual for him. So he apologies for taking a few liberties with the geographical detail and asks the readers to call the novel Scott's rendition of China. Thanks to his professionalism, he achieves his usual fast-paced, realistic thriller.
The Prologue takes the reader back to the Imperial China of 217 BC. A great library housing over forty Confucian scholars are searching for a mysterious secret their Divine Ruler, the god-king of Qin, is desperate to discover. The scholars are regularly tortured and, usually, executed for failure to find the secret. Chapter 1 fast forwards to the present day; in the Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses, where the primary attraction is the famous terracotta army discovered in the mid-1970s, young Dan Chen is working with four colleagues getting ready 75 pieces to be sent to the British Museum. An earthquakes finds Dan alone, next to one magnificent warrior, now headless. Inside the neck Dan finds a slender, smooth cylinder about eight inches in length. Bad News for Dan. He pockets the tube - actually down the back of his trousers - and leaves for a hospital check-up. He contacts a mysterious person but, being followed, he hands it over to his 23 year-old girlfriend Lara Hartmann, taking a year off from Zurich University in the middle of her degree course in Chinese Philosophy. Bad News for Laura, Dan was never seen alive again and Laura was in the State's sights.
At last, in Chapter 3, we meet up with our hero, Ben Hope. He is in Zurich to attend the engagement party of his little sister Ruth and Stefan Hartmann (yes, make the link). The festivities are shattered by a 'phone call from Olivia, Lara's friend in China. The latter is missing. Cue Ben Hope to leap into action and a long-haul flight aboard a Steiner jet (Ruth is CE of the company) to China. His companion? Stefan, desperate to locate his sister Lara. Chapter 8 sees them both in Beijing. They are met by Sammy Tsang, second-in-command of Steiner's operations in China. The three go by chopper and car to Qinnjiacun, the village where Lara and Olivia Keller lived. They then travel to a police HQ to meet Detective Lin: a slender, petite woman of maybe thirty rose up from the desk to greet them. She was dressed all in black, with long hair scraped tightly back in a ponytail, dark penetrating eyes and finely sculpted features that would have been attractive if her face hadn't been set in a hard expression - somewhere between extreme distrust and outright hostility...Well, it takes awhile, but our Ben wins her over (but we know she won't be following him home). Lin's boss, Chief Zhao, is an equally unsmiling superior with greying hair, baggy eyes and a paunch (we know he's bound to be up to no good, and so it proves). Still, Detective Lin unbends and allows Ben to call her Shi Yun ('poem cloud').They now know Dan is dead and soon they discover Olivia has not only been murdered whilst they were at the police HQ, but her organs had been 'harvested'.
Shi Yun joins Ben and Stefan (Sammy is killed soon after) in a typical Scott Mariani maelstrom of car chases, shoot outs, a link up with an underground group (based on the real Falun Gong) who have both Laura and the cylinder in their hands. The latter is linked to the Golden Library of the book's title. Bankrolled by a multi-millionaire, Chang Han Yu, the team outwit the 'baddies' and, with Lara safely in their grasp, manage by car, goods train and old boat to get near enough to Taiwan for an American destroyer to rescue them from two pursuing Chinese corvettes. Ben and Stefan get back to Switzerland with Lara to a joyful reunion with Ruth and Lara's parents. Offered a job as a big cheese in his sister's company, Ben is pondering it when his mate Jeff Decker 'phones from Normandy with a plan to expand their business. "On my way", Ben said. So ends another Mariani tale well told.
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