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"Fine
Fiction on Asia"
Book
Description & Author Interview
HANGMAN'S
POINT is set in Hong Kong in 1857, one of the most exciting periods
in the former British colony's often dramatic history. Its
main character, Andrew Adams, is a ne'er-do-well American ex-seaman
who manages a tavern called the Bee Hive in the raucous Chinese
section of the colony. He lives above a Chinese medicine shop
with his American barmaid
girlfriend. On the side, he is involved with various Chinese
underground secret societies (Triads) and activities such as
clandestine gambling and the smuggling of weapons into China.
Adam's New Year prank in the harbor inadvertently results in the
burning of an imperial Chinese war junk which had only recently been
captured by a British Admiral. To avoid a long prison term,
Adams agrees to aid the Hong Kong police by entering southern China
in search of Chinese pirates who attacked a mail steamer and
beheaded eleven foreigners. Adams offers the police two
advantages: his fluency in various Chinese dialects and his
friendship with local rebel groups inside China to whom he supplies
arms and ammuni- tion. Unknown to Adams, nothing is as it seems and
he is being set up by an old enemy to be killed.
Adams becomes involved with the beautiful and cunning wife of a
leading British tea trader. When her husband disappears and a
trail of blood is found on the floor of his office-boat, Adams is
framed by her for the murder and finds himself at the center of one
of the most sensational murder trials the rough-and-tumble colony
has yet seen. When an anti-American British jury finds him
guilty, in order to escape a hanging, Adams engineers a prison
escape. As Hong Kong police comb the colony to find him, he
disguises himself in the one occupation they will never suspect --
as a Chinese collector of "night soil," i.e., human waste.
As this main event progresses to its dramatic con- clusion at
HANGMAN'S POINT, in the background, several interrelated subplots
unfold: the Chinese coolie slave trade, a bread-poisoning attempt on
Hong Kong's entire foreign community and a pirate attack on Hong
Kong. The novel depicts the brutality of prison life of the
period including the use of the detested tread wheel as well as the
horrible treatment of Chinese coolies aboard slave ships sailing
from Southern China to South America.
Many of the events in the novel are based on historical
incidents. For example, the arsenic poisoning of the foreign
community by Chinese bakers is the only recorded mass poisoning of a
community in world history. The period's language, dress,
customs and objects have been thoroughly researched and fused into
the writing -- from crinolines and top hats to punkahs and pidgin
English to opium dens and clipper ships.
HANGMAN'S POINT will transport the reader into an exciting and
turbulent Hong Kong caught between the Dragon and the Lion: Imperial
China and Victorian England.
ISBN: 0-9661899-1-4
Price: $24.95
Hardcover Mystery/Thriller/Historical 538 pages
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An Interview With author Dean Barrett
Q. Why did you set your novel in Hong Kong in 1857?
A. Why not?
Q. Come on, seriously, what was so special about that place and that
year?
A. Well, In 1857, many foreigners in Hong Kong waters were beheaded
by Chinese; there were scandals among officials in Hong Kong to such
an extent that the governor was not on speaking terms with his own
attorney general and they had to write notes to each other; the
"Protector of Chinese" was found to be in league with
pirates; the police commissioner owned brothels; the British fleet
was shelling Canton. Just at the time when people had decided
Hong Kong didn't have much future, some Chinese bakers placed ten
pounds of arsenic in the bread eaten by foreigners living
there. History's only mass poisoning. And that's just
for openers.
Q. Sounds like you picked quite a year.
A. In fact, up until WWII, historians referred to 1857 as probably
the most disastrous year in Hong Kong history. Which is
wonderful for a writer because "disastrous" usually means
dramatic.
Q. What was going on in the heads of the bakers?
A. They probably figured it was their last chance to get rid of the
foreign devils. The foreigners had the guns and cannon and
ships-of-war so the Chinese patriots used what weapon they had --
arsenic. Whether they were patriots with a plan or poisoners
with a plot is in the eye of the beholder, but the 1850's cultural
and military clash between Chinese and foreigners was one of the
most colorful periods of human history. The misunderstandings
were incredible; sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious.
Q. An example?
A. Chinese had never seen green eyes before. So they assumed
everyone was born with dark eyes and the eyes of green-eyed people
had faded as they got older. Questions they asked revealed how
little they understood the West: "Do you have a moon in your
sky?" "Do you have a sky?" "Is it
true your emperor is a woman (Queen Victoria)?" You have
to under- stand that through Chinese eyes, foreigners weren't simply
from other countries; it was almost as if they were aliens from
another solar system, as in the film "Independence Day."
And, of course, the British and Americans and others had many
misunderstandings
about the Chinese as well.
Q. You lived in Asia for 17 years?
A. Seventeen years in Hong Kong; three more in Bangkok and Taiwan.
That's 20 years in Asia. Not counting the year in Hawaii for the
master's degree, of course.
Q. When were you living in Hawaii?
A. About the time Lincoln freed the slaves.
Q. What were you doing in Asia?
A. I first went out during the Vietnam War. As a Chinese
linguist in a SOU with the Army Security Agency.
Q. SOU?
A. Sorry. "Special Operations Unit." Then I
returned to the States and did graduate work in Chinese at San
Francisco State College and went on to Hawaii. Then back to
Asia.
Q. Why'd you leave Asia to come back to the States?
A. Wish I knew.
Q. Seriously.
A. Well, I needed a composer for a musical I was writing set in Hong
Kong in 1857. I also realized I had a lot to learn as far as
crafting the book and lyrics of a musical. And I wanted to
spend a lot of time in the research library on 42nd Street. I
love researching in libraries. So I've written a play about
the 19th century Chinese slave trade called "Barracoon," a
musical about the poisoning case in 1857 Hong Kong called
""Fragrant Harbour," a novel set in Hong Kong and
southern China in 1857, Hangman's Point, and a film
script, Dragon Slayer, set in Vietnam in 1968 and
southern China in -- you guessed it -- 1857. And, of course,
I'm working on the sequel to Hangman's Point
called Thieves Hamlet.
Q. Also set in the year...
A. You got it.
Q. But if you wanted to write a musical couldn't you find an Asian
composer in Asia?
A. Asian composers are often brilliant. But they all train in
classical music, not musical theater. Broadway- style musical
theater is a very different kettle of fish.
Q. You're originally from Connecticut?
A. Groton, Connecticut. "Home of the Nautilus; Submarine Capital
of the World," as the sign says.
Q. What took you to Asia?
A. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, I already knew I belonged
in Asia. It's just one of those things. As a teenager I was
going to estate auctions and, if I could afford it, buying up
anything that looked Asian. Of course, at the time I
didn't know an Indonesian batik from a Ming vase, but I already knew
I loved anything Asian. And I began reading Robert Van Gulik's
Judge Dee series set in T'ang China.
Q. Which brings up the question: Would you say Hangman's Point
is a historical mystery novel?
A. That's a very good question. The novel is historical with
elements of mystery and thriller. I think the writer Harold
Stephens summed it up best: "A tale of adventure, steeped in
mystery and suspense."
Q. Didn't he in fact say, "magnificent tale of adventure
A. I'm modest.
Q. So you love Asia but yet you now live in Manhattan.
A. True. But almost every project I write is connected to or
set in Asia. So in my head I never left.
Q. When were you last in Asia?
A. Year before last. Hong Kong, Beijing and Thailand.
Q. Any thoughts about going back to Asia to live?
A. All the time.
Q. Any other projects?
A. I just completed an introduction to the journals of an American
soldier captured and enslaved by Taiping women warriors in the
1860's. One of Frederick Townsend Ward's 'Ever Victorious
Army' officers left a journal of his three-month captivity by
Chinese female combatants.
Q. What's the title?
A. A Love Story: The China Memoirs of Thomas
Rowley, Esq. It's actually very sexy and very erotic.
Q. You're writing an introduction or you actually wrote it and claim
to be writing the introduction?
A. Would I lie to you?
The End
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