Distant Water [ペーパーバック]

Distant Water is Bruce Gray's tale of an American-in-Hong Kong lawyer's involvement in the power struggle to lead China that followed Mao Zedong's death. In its first pages is a list of characters. This is a thoughtful consideration for readers and a sign that a complicated story is in the offing. The cleverly plotted complications do ensue, but one of the chief characters is left off the list, China itself.

The battle between Deng Xiaoping's Communist moderates and the rabid radical's of Mao's widow is what makes the plot work, here. It's also a major part of the value of this book as historical fiction. Recent history it was, but China has changed with such lightning speed that it's easy to forget just how recent it was. Plus, few have probably thought lately of what might have ensued had Madame Mao's brutal bullies won. Think North Korea spread across China.

Though there's a history lesson here, Gray never lets it interfere with the story; on the contrary, it's what makes the story sizzle. The story develops at a leisurely pace as Gray sets up the circumstances that will lead to the frenetic pace of the final third of the book. Bryan Paton, the young American lawyer newly hired by a prestigious Hong Kong law firm, is the reluctant hero on a mission to the mainland to claim the body of the mysteriously murdered daughter of one of Hong Kong's wealthiest men. What he finds and doesn't find will mix him intimately in what surely is one of the key turning points of the 20th Century.

Gray writes with the steady hand of someone who knows what he's talking about. His descriptions of Hong Kong and Chinese society seem and are authentic, garnered from his twenty-six years as a career diplomat specializing in China, including eight years living in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Other episodes depicting the inhuman cruelty of the Communist fundamentalists are as gruesome as the stadium incident in Kite Runner, and presumably are not from Grays's experience. They do, nonetheless, make one extremely glad to not have been part of any Communist purges.

After the action-packed dénouement and tying the strands of the underlying mystery for Paton, Gray lists what happens to each of the characters after the story ends. It's an analog to the character list at the book's start. This creates an added feel of reality, so much so that I had to Google a few of the characters to see if they were real.

Chris Brockman

Twin mysteries unfold in Distant Water, both involving missing daughters in Asia. The first story is sometimes told by Bryan Paton, an American lawyer who has just joined a Hong Kong firm that represents a prominent businessman, Li Dak-chung. As the novel opens, Dak-chung's daughter, Fiona Li, is entering China. When we last see her, she is on the brink of being abducted. When the Chinese government notifies Dak-chung that his daughter's dead body has been recovered, Paton is dispatched to China to identify the body and to arrange for its return to Hong Kong. The reader soon begins to wonder whether the body is, in fact, Fiona's.

The second mystery, which dominates the second half of the story, gives the novel the flavor of a political thriller. It revolves around General Zhu Fangguo, whose daughter is also missing. Zhu supports the moderate political faction in its struggle for power after Chairman Mao's death -- a position that puts Zhu squarely at odds with Mao's far-from-moderate widow. Zhu is both the instigator and the victim of political intrigue. Zhu hopes to use the recent death of Chairman Mao as "the cover for exacting cold revenge," although the meaning of that phrase does not become clear until late in the novel.

For that matter, it's unclear how the stories of the two missing daughters are related until late in the novel, although the connection isn't difficult to guess. The plot is nonetheless clever. Distant Water easily held my interest from the first page to the last, in part because the cast of characters is so diverse. From British diplomats to Chinese civil servants, Bruce Gray gives each character a unique personality. I can't say that I became emotionally attached to any of the characters, but I enjoyed reading about them.

In addition to the power vacuum that follows Mao's death, the novel delves into the political situations in Taiwan (where Dak-chung's sister is a powerful and ruthless figure) and in Hong Kong, while offering a history lesson that begins with the Treaty of Versailles and the May 4th Movement. Readers who don't know much about the twentieth century history of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong may need to breeze through a Wikipedia article or two, as I did, to get a better handle on the story. The struggle of a faction that included Mao's wife for leadership of the government, popularly characterized as "the Gang of Four," as well as the complex relationship between China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are all integral to the novel.

Gray paints a convincing picture of the authoritarian regime that has Paton (and other characters) in its clutches. Gray builds tension as the characters wonder who to trust in a treacherous environment. On occasion Gray indulges in unnecessary lectures about the evils of communist dictatorships, exposition that has less impact than his descriptions of the unease (at best) and terror (at worst) his characters experience at the hands of authoritarian thugs.

Putting aside the improbability that a young man with zero legal experience would be given such a high profile position in a law firm, Distant Water tells a believable story, at least as compared to most modern thrillers. One aspect of the ending is a bit of a stretch, but the "surprise" is well integrated into the cohesive plot. Despite my emotional detachment from the story, I found it fascinating and I do not hesitate to recommend it to thriller fans. I would give Distant Water 4 1/2 stars if that option were available.

Distant Water has a lot of characters and, at first, can be daunting. But the author is careful to provide full personalities for each of them, which brings them all to life. He also provides a list of characters in the beginning,the better to help those who cannot keep all the Chinese names straight. The plot evolves slowly, allowing for the author to make use of his power to draw on his years in Asia to provide beautifully descriptive scenes and activities both in Hong Kong and then in Beijing. In this he excels. Not many Westerners were in Beijing in 1976 but the pictures he paints are vivid, realistic, and accurate. I know because I was there the following year and the empty streets, the dim lights, the hopelessly rude service at the Beijing Hotel were not exagerated in the slightest. For me, it was a stroll down memory lane. For anyone interested in China then, before modernization started, it provides keen observations.