Hong Kong is a 'borrowed place living on borrowed time.' It is also a place of extremes: violence and diplomacy, rich and poor, Chinese and British. Soon, communists and capitalists. There are two months to go before the official handover to the Peoples' Republic of China. Or to be more precise, for those residents of the territory who dread the arrival of the communists, a countdown of a mere six million seconds (hence the book's title).
It is, understandably, a time fraught with an ominous tension. But it is also a time of opportunity: for some to leave, some to change sides and for the stoical majority to stay and make the best of it. For DCI 'Charlie' Chan it is the amount of time he has left to put together the pieces of a bizarre jigsaw puzzle before it gets buried by a change of administration.
The book sinks its hooks into the reader from the very first page where Chan is negotiating choppy seas near the Communist border on a police launch, seeking out three severed heads floating in a polythene bag. He is investigating a gruesome murder made even more grisly by the fact that the victims' bodies have already been put through a meat mincer and made into a fetid human jam!
John Burdett, at one time a lawyer in both the private and public sectors in Hong Kong, has written an absorbing contemporary thriller. He impresses with his intimate knowledge of the place and his eye for detail, not only with police procedures and forensic examinations but also his depiction of the colony itself. He paints a thoroughly convincing and vivid picture of present day Hong Kong, with all its vices and virtues. You can almost taste and smell the island's thronging thoroughfares where the odour of human debris mixes with the enticing aromas emanating from street eating-houses. It is a place of sharp contrasts: squalor and affluence live side by side, symbolised by the opulent, sky-touching, high-rise buildings that look down on crude wooden shacks.
Everyone seems to fear the communists. No one wants to be a mere equal. In Hong Kong, wealth is all that anyone aspires to. Forward-looking the colony may be, yet it is a location steeped in many anachronistic colonial traditions. For the British, it is the last pink bit left on the map.
The British are depicted as culturally marooned and the last bastions of a dying way of life. They are arrogant, self- satisfied prigs. But the irony is that they have been in Hong Kong so long that many have lost touch with the evolution of their own culture back home. There's no place for them in Britain and soon there will be no place for them in Hong Kong.
The reader gets a real feel of the place, its inhabitants and customs. But beneath those glittering monuments to capitalism and enterprise the foundations are undermined by a festering corruption.
D.C.I. Chan, the central character, is an uncompromising figure. Half-Chinese, half-Irish, he is more comfortable with his oriental ancestry. A deep disillusionment feeds his unhappiness and fuels his chain-smoking anxiety. He is highly ethical, honest, and unfazed by his superiors. Furthermore, despite a principled dedication to his job, he's not prepared to attend the social functions that could help grease the wheels of free-wheeling ambition. Chan's efficiency and rate of success are legendary but in this mire of corruption he is also distrusted because of these very qualities.
As the intriguing plot develops, an insidious web of deceit and subterfuge unravels which connects a corrupt communist general, Chinese Triads and the American Mafia. Unlikely bed-mates, you may think, but they are united by a common language: money. This is an intelligent book with full-bodied, believable characters, interesting locations and an ingenious plot. The brutality and cynicism of some scenes is tempered by a humane pathos and humour. Burdett expertly captures the latent racial tensions and mutual mistrust that underscores the ambivalent British/Chinese relationship.
This book is definitely worth more than a few seconds of anyone's time.
