Chinese Take-out

For something different, here's a novel to try. It's a spy thriller based on a true story.

Chinese Take-out (Kindle Edition)

Ian Mathie is a well-established author of non-fiction. He has published several volumes of memoir, based on his work in the 1970s in Africa, where he developed water resources. Chinese Take-Out is his first novel. It is a spy thriller, based however on the true story of Fanng Lizhi, a Chinese astrophysicist, who with his wife was offered sanctuary in the United States at the time of the Tienanmen massacre.
Fact weighs strongly in the first chapters as the interwoven politics of China, America, Russia and Britain are set down, fixing the reader in time and place. The story opens with Green, a US government agent, being pulled off an operation on the Chinese/North Korean frontier, his preferred area of focus in Asia, to investigate a claim concerning smuggled arms and the possible export of nuclear secrets. A United States senator may be implicated. Green and his team carry out enquiries, bug the senator’s private hunting lodge and set up decoys to delay the operations until definite charges can be brought.
Meanwhile, in China, the protests in Tienanmen Square and demands for less rigid control by the government are turning nasty. The army is brought in, biding its time, while Chong (the fictional equivalent of Fanng Lizhi) seeks refuge with his wife in the American Embassy in Beijing. From there, they are airlifted out to safety under the nose of suspicious Chinese officials, in a daring rescue operation.
With two complex interwoven stories, the book maintains suspense, switching between story lines. The reader moves between high-flying naval and air force personnel, government agents, wire-tapping experts and the President himself. Between the defecting Chinese couple and the shady senator’s devious operations, the stories merge via the keen-nosed Green, who scents irregularity with unfailing instinct.
Readers of spy thrillers will not be disappointed in the author’s first book in this genre. It is a complex, fast-moving story with numerous twists and turns and deserves 5 star rating. However, Ian Mathie prefers not to be pigeonholed in any one genre. Who knows what he may surprise us with next?