AustLit

'Hong Kong enters 1980 in a restless mood. As China’s doors open to foreign investment, Hong Kong’s manufacturing base declines and the number of illegal immigrants continues to grow. Britain’s lease of the Hong Kong New Territories will expire on 30 June 1997. Confidence in Hong Kong’s future is already affected by speculation about the handover to China that this may trigger. Many Hong Kong nationals depart to live overseas.

'In January, the illegitimate son of Hong Kong’s most powerful gangster, who is also the nephew of tycoon Yip Yee Koon, abandons his role as leader of the Wo Luen Shing Triad and returns to England where he was educated. Tony Smith’s departure unleashes family secrets which almost decimate the Yip empire. At the same time, other criminal groups in the infamous Kowloon Walled City use his exit to seize power. A month or so later, Pearl Green, in her role as Director of the Hong Kong-based June Bowen Foundation, is in England to attend a conference. In London’s Soho, she witnesses a worrying incident. After hearing her account, her father, London-based James Gates, links the matter to a Hong Kong source and travels out unexpectedly. On the plane, James encounters a beautiful Eurasian woman, and sees she is wearing Tony Smith’s distinctive dragon sapphire ring, worn only by the leader of the Wo Luen Shing.

'Smith must be dead.

'James is appalled by this overt display of power. He assigns his men on the ground in Hong Kong—Peter Benson, and Yip Yee Koon’s very flappable chauffeur, Hua Leung—to follow the woman with the blue dragon ring. What can they discover about her plans for contributing to the palpable restlessness abroad in Hong Kong in the opening months of this new decade?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Near the end of a twitchy year, as China opens its doors to foreign investment and Hong Kong ponders its future, Pearl Green returns on the same day that Marcus Brown arrives on a mission to set up an investment project to benefit his affluent Native American Indian community in Florida, America. Pearl is back to resume management of The June Bowen Foundation and takes up temporary residence in The Hilton Hotel. Marcus, uneasy about his first trip overseas, also checks in to The Hilton and is about to enjoy his first meal in Hong Kong when he is approached by a conman, Terry Shaw, who begins laying the foundations for carrying out a scheme to relieve Marcus of his people’s investment funds. The following day, Marcus’s sense of unease turns to panic when he is framed for a murder which takes place in the hotel, that of the wealthy business tycoon Dennis Childs, the father of one of Pearl’s friends – the famous Belinda Jones, celebrity wife of rock legend Smut Jones. Whilst Marcus languishes in a prison cell, Belinda returns to bury her father and disappears from The Hilton while on her way to visit Pearl. Peter Benson, concerned that Pearl is somehow central to Belinda’s kidnapping, consults Pearl’s father. When James Gates announces that he will be in Hong Kong during the first week of winter and old friend Yip Yee Koon – whose own networks are humming – warns her to be on the alert, Pearl knows that the atmosphere described by Yip as a state of strangeness means that trouble has arrived in Hong Kong. It takes all the qualities that the mythological turtle can harness – wisdom and the valour of a warrior – for James, Pearl, Peter Benson and Yip Yee Koon to overcome the criminal forces that enter their lives in this dark and dangerous winter – a Black Tortoise Winter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

' In October 1964, as Pearl Green approaches her twentieth birthday in a Hong Kong where the sixties are rocking, China is about to enter the global arms race by detonating the country's first nuclear device. The air is thick with intrigue and the anticipation of trouble, which breaks out when leading nuclear scientist, Dr Lin Dei ordered to destroy his research results and return to Beijing murders his supervisor and flees, taking his valuable research papers with him.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.