WHITE GUERRILLA

A methodically presented tale set firmly within the new international world order.

When the story opens, the East–Hong Kong, China, Japan, the Philippines–is on the verge of gaining economic and cultural ascendancy over the West, now only a phantom of its past imperial and financial glory. Broad in scope, the narrative encompasses a wide array of disparate economic and cultural forces. Murchisson, a multi-faceted Western business conglomerate, has its fingers stuck in too many pies. A sugar refinery on Minggu Island in the Philippines, meanwhile, is a quaintly old-economy business throwback almost unintentionally acquired by Murchisson. And Pablo Valerio, the manager/owner of the refinery, is an atavistic representative of the Spanish colonial regime that once controlled the island, the refinery and the sugar industry. Then there are the Muslim guerrillas who align themselves against Valerio–and by association, against Murchisson–in trying to loose Valerio’s iron grip on the island. The story follows the misadventures of Matt Halliday, a low-level executive for Murchisson who, while vacationing on Minggu Island, is mistaken for someone else and kidnapped. Moss follows in the footsteps of other recent hostage fiction like Don DeLillo’s Mao II and Richard Powers’s Plowing the Dark. But White Guerilla differs from these novels in that the protagonist begins to sympathize with his captors when he begins to realize not only the malevolence of Valerio, but the dubious dealings of his employers.

Occasionally abstruse, but a competent, canny piece of intrigue.