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Chinaman's Chance
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Product Description
- from Chinaman's Chance
Thus begins what may be the most popular of Ross Thomas's unique stories. The combination of Wu, pretender to the Imperial throne of China, and Quincy Durant, who has his own colorful past, makes for a heady experience. After starting with the deceased pelican on a California beach, the plot mixes in the disappearance of a large sum of money that should have been buried in Vietnam, and the search for the missing member of a trio of singing sisters from the Ozarks. Only Thomas could have stirred this concoction with the style, humor, and suspense that captures the reader at the very beginning and doesn't let go until the last word.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1481377 in Books
- Published on: 1978-03-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 383 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Since Thomas's death in 1995, all but one of his twenty-five novels have gone out of print. This should never have happened to the man of whom The New Yorker has said, "Very few...are as consistently entertaining...even fewer can match him for style and power." St. Martin's Minotaur is proud to remedy this situation by reissuing Thomas's novels. So start reading, and prepare to join Ross Thomas's legions of admiring fans.
Customer Reviews
Great story, great characters, great book!
Lifelong pals since they hooked up in a San Francisco orphanage, Artie Woo and Quincy Durant are two of the best characters you'll come across in any thriller. Nobody plumbs the depths of corruption and works a great con like this dynamic duo of the Pacific Rim. Throw in the likes of grifter Otherguy Overby, CIA master Whittaker Lowell James, and a former folk trio named Ivory, Lace, and Silk, and you've got the makings for one helluva adventure.
"Chinaman's Chance" is a delight to read. The juicy, twisted tale of opportunists on the make was tailor-made for Ross Thomas' fast-paced, witty style. He had a remarkable ability of making cynical characters likable and complex plots believable. His novels are "page-turners," but they're also insightful and poignant sketches of the human condition. He was truly an uncommon talent.
As good as Robert B. Parker and John D. MacDonald
If you like the combination of humor and action in the tradition of Leslie Charteris, Raymond Chandler, Robert B Parker, and John D. MacDonald, you will like Ross Thomas. Great character development. Good plot. Lots of great dialog.GET THESE BOOKS BACK IN PRINT!
One of Thomas' jewels; if not his best book
The wily Artie Wu and the often explosive Quincy Durant appear for the first time in this novel.
Throw in a missing actress, a luckless vietnam vet, a fixer connected into the highest circles in Washington, a couple of very bad guys and a fat, Tab-drinking italian killer with his two hoodlums.
Mix it with a couple million bucks under the ground in the ex American embassy in Saigon and a seedy place in Southern California that is so ripe that it has to be perceived as outright rotten.
Then let the master of the double and triple cross weave a plot that's thrilling, entertaining, unpredictable and sometimes outright shocking up to the very end.
Spice it up with some dialogues that are so dry that they can't be outmatched by a swig of Gin, straight from the bottle.
All those components make up one of Thomas' best reads ever.
I consider it to be a shame that so many of his books went out of print.
