Peter Tasker

This book is let down by its title. If it had not been for the strong recommendation of my son, I would not have looked at this book but, I must thank him for exercising his, not inconsiderable, persuasive powers.
Tasker has lived in the Orient and has an understanding of the conflicts between the old civilized ways and the brash new ideas from the west. Whilst this is most obviously a crime story, populaced with characters distilled from many sources, they are well rounded people. Tasker has the skill to darw a baddie who, is genuinely unpleasant and yet amusing at the same time and his hero, the detective, Mori, is both cliched and original in equal measures. He is a Bogart type, always short of money and, although tempted by a large contract, when he finds that to fulfil same he will need to hurt a friend, Mori knows the right thing to do.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as a detective story and, at the same time, absorbed a greater understanding of the friction between east and west: that can't be bad, can it?… (meer)