THE BRIDGE OF A HUNDRED DRAGONS

by Emma Drummond ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 1986

Drummond's love affair with Sine-Soviet history continues in her sixth novel. She's written others under the Elizabeth Darrell pseudonym, one of which, The Gathering Wolves (1980), seems to have supplied plot inspiration for this novel, since it told the story of an English engineer stationed in Russia during the Revolution who helped a pair of White Russian sisters escape the Reds. Here, Mark Rawlings, another British engineer, haunted by his experiences in revolutionary Russia and his love for a woman named Katya, whom he unsuccessfully tried to smuggle out of the country, turns up in Hong Kong in 1926, on the eve of another sweeping internecine struggle. He's called to Shanghai to inspect the site of a bridge disaster, just as Chiang Kai-shek takes Hankow and begins to move northward. On his way to Shanghai, though, Rawlings bumps into 19-year-old Alexandra Mostyn, a flapper whose daddy is one of Shanghai's leading businessmen, not to mention a thorough villain: Garrad Mostyn tries to get engineer Rawlings to falsify his findings at the bridge site and urges his daughter to offer her body up in the cause. Turns out she's more than willing to seduce the Britisher, because he's managed to raise her consciousness and show her she should be something more than ""a social butterfly with gaudy wings and little intelligence."" They fall in love, only to have Raw. lings' past--in the form of his son by Katya, who reappears in the Russian ÉmigrÉ section of Shanghai--come between them. . .that and the onslaught of Chiang Kai-shek's armies. Alexandra is orphaned in the fighting, but after Rawlings pulls off a bridge disaster of his own à la The Bridge Over the River Kwai, they're rapturously reunited--though it looks-as if Rawlings' son will always be something of a third wheel. Characters are stereotypical, and Drummond has a frustrating way of backing off from dramatizing the scenes a reader would like to see played out, instead of seeing them dribble off into ellipses. Melodrama, and not very stirring.

Pub Date: June 30, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION