China Star
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The master of the exotic adventure novel returns with a tale of romance, vengeance and intrigue. The story begins in 1920s Paris, where Shanghai Station's Russian count, Alexander Karlov, and Viktor Polyak, the Soviet agent who killed Karlov's parents and abducted his twin sister Katerina, hunt each other through grand hotels, sewers, fashion houses and embassy parties. Soon after, Katerina sets sail with Alexander for Shanghai on the China Star.
On board, Alexander is charmed by Laila Hammond, a Ceylonese woman of mixed blood, who is married to a sick English tea planter. Polyak and his agents pursue them as the ship stops in Egypt. On the night train from Alexandria to Cairo, Karlov and Laila begin the passionate affair that threatens to destroy them.
The young count continues to the mountainous tea country of Ceylon with Laila, where he is hunted in the jungle by Polyak's most dangerous assassin, while Katerina sails to Shanghai, under the protection of Hak Lee, the brutal gangster who is her brother's partner. Following her to his home in exile, Alexander confronts his enemy as violence, greed and romance come together in the most exotic and exciting city in the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Palpably contrived although rich in ambience and marvelously entertaining, Bull's new erotic swashbuckler revisits Count Alexander Karlov, the dashing and sensual young Russian hero from Shanghai Station. Picking up the action four years later in the Paris of 1922, we find Alexander, now 22, searching for his twin sister, Katia, who at age 17 was raped and kidnapped from the Trans-Siberian train by the Karlovs' bitter enemy, Soviet Commissar Viktor Polyak the same assassin who murdered their mother and later killed their father in Shanghai. Alexander doesn't know that Polyak is already in Paris and awaiting the arrival of Katia, who now the mother of Polyak's son and thoroughly brainwashed by the best Party training schools adept in the art of assassination is carrying out a mission to kill a Party enemy in Poland. Miraculously, the siblings reunite and flee for Shanghai on the steamer China Star while Polyak relentlessly chases them through Cairo, Bombay, Ceylon and to Shanghai. At times more travelogue and tour guide (with some romance) than cliffhanger, Bull has delivered another light, lithe read.
