CHINAMAN

Soft cover; Very good; First printing. A trade paperback Advance Reading Copy (ARC). (ISBN 0-671-74301-5) very good tight copy, unread, outer page edges very faintly marked, very good shiny wrappers very faint scuff at top of cover near spine. In front of the main entrance of the London department store, the motorcycle exploded in a blast of blinding white light. In the tradition of Len Deighton, Jack Higgins, and Ken Follett, Stephen Leather's "The Chinaman" delivers jolt after jolt of suspense Â- a novel of vivid characters, intense action and relentless excitement from the first page to the last. The only surviving members of Nguyen Ngoc Minh's family fell victims to the department store bomb. A North Vietnamese trained in guerrilla warfare, Nguyen had escaped to the south and fought with the U.S. Special Forces until the fall of Saigon. In London, he had found a peaceful new life.but now, his family's slaughter has aroused in the battered, slight survivor the passions of a warrior bent on revenge. The police and the politicians to whom Nguyen turns for help dismiss him as a bothersome "Chinaman." But journalist Ian Wood sees the obdurate Nguyen as the key to his big story Â- and gives him the name of a suspected terrorist leader. Belfast lawyer Liam Hennessy is one of the most powerful men in a terrorist network out of control; even he does not know who is behind the London bombings. When Nguyen unleashes a harrowing campaign of violence at his Irish countryside farm, Hennessey tries to make a secret deal with the British that may yield the terrorists' identities. As the savage bombings continue in London, Hennessy's wife flees to her lover's arms; a traitor undergoes a brutal interrogation; the rogue terrorists prepare their most gruesome assault; and the Chinaman races toward a violent climax. Packed with authentic detail and extraordinary scenes, "The Chinaman" vaults Stephen Leather to the very top rank of today's suspense novelists. Suspense