THE GOLD SWAN

Sophisticated story of East/West manners and politics, with a Maugham-like narrator.

In Hong Kong, Clay Williams is security chief for construction of a new skyscraper known colloquially as “The Golden Swan.” Recently estranged from his wife and retired from the FBI, stoic narrator Clay gets respite via quarterly visits from his father Alan, a retired orchardist and workaholic. The man behind the Swan is star architect John Llewellyn, whose charisma and notoriety bring the cachet the Chinese government wants. Llewellyn’s amanuensis and paramour Anne Iverson, who regularly blocks access to her boss, has made a special project of finding a mate for Clay, though her own sexual chemistry with him is apparent. When Alan dies in a fall from Clay’s apartment window, police posit suicide while Clay knows it was murder. Confirmation comes from a surprising source when frightened teenager Soong Chan buttonholes Clay and explains that Hsu Shui-ban, grandson of Wen Quichin (the elderly head of the criminal triad 88K) and one of Clay’s neighbors, was kidnapped from the building on the night in question, witnessed by Alan. Wen Quichin politely abducts Clay and shows him a grainy video of the execution of the rival triad member who killed both Hsu and Alan. Reflections on dad and on the unusual resolution of his murder bleed into Clay’s handling of a crisis in the Llewellyn camp when Yao Bok-kee, the magnate who supervised feasibility studies of the Swan and acted as intermediary between Llewellyn and the Chinese government, is arrested for graft—and quickly executed. Worse, the Swan, Llewellyn’s masterpiece and intended legacy, is leaning. It falls to Clay and Ann to get to the bottom of the Swan’s feet of clay while avoiding a clutch of Chinese who may be trying either to help or kill them.

Thayer’s twelfth (after Force 12, 2001, etc.) solidifies his reputation as an elegant stylist and presents complex issues with haunting lucidity.