The Buddha of Brewer Street
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Backbench MP Tom Goodfellowe is caught up in the search for the new Dalai Lama in this highly original and compelling thriller from the author of GOODFELLOWE MP and HOUSE OF CARDS – now reissued in new cover style.
Tom Goodfellowe is the unlikeliest of political heroes. An MP whose career has already been consigned to the scrapheap of history, with a private life that staggers between confusion and chaos… And it’s all about to get worse.
A new Dalai Lama is born. The infant god-king of Tibet. And around the child explodes an international conspiracy that will carve a trail of death from the slopes of Mount Everest right to the heart of London’s Chinatown.
Goodfellowe becomes drawn into a murderous race against time and against sinister sources within his own government. On the outcome will hang the fate of one of the world’s great religions – and Goodfellowe’s turbulent personal life. Because someone, someone very close, is betraying him at every turn.
Reviews
‘A rattling good yarn to keep you warm on long winter nights… It deserves to be relished… Here is good old-fashioned entertainment in the great British tradition of Rider Haggard, done with wit, skill, pace and panache.’
Sunday Express
‘Parliamentary intrigue, political scandal and government treachery… Dobbs demonstrates why he is the master.’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Slick, fast-moving and distinctive.’
Mail on Sunday
About the author
Michael Dobbs was at Mrs Thatcher’s side as she took her first step into Downing Street as Prime Minister, and was a key aide to John Major when he was voted out. In between times he was bombed in Brighton, banished from Chequers and blamed for failing to secure a Blair-Major television debate. He is now one of the country’s leading political commentators.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For fans of the Machiavellian Prime Minister Francis Urquhart, the antiheroic protagonist of Dobbs's previous trilogy (adapted for TV as House of Cards, starring Ian Richardson), Thomas Goodfellowe, a decent, down-on-his-political-luck backbencher, is an unenticing replacement. Likewise, few readers will be tempted by the second installment's ludicrous intrigue involving the Chinese government's attempts to find and kidnap the newly reincarnated, British-born Dalai Lama. A former political adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Dobbs seems to have gone soft since New Labour took power, if Goodfellowe's soap-operatic midlife crisis is an indicator. With his wife hospitalized for depression, his teenage daughter hiding family planning and pregnancy leaflets and his junior ministerial career over, Goodfellowe is totally unprepared to be enlisted by Buddhist monks in the search for the next Dalai Lama. Dobbs delivers plenty of international cat-and-mouse episodes, stretching from London's Chinatown to Tibet, along with scenes of Chinese human rights abuses that would alarm Amnesty International, but none of this adds up to much of a read. Although there are good guys to cheer for and baddies to boo in the race to find the special child in England's Tibetan refugee community, this featherweight entertainment has no punch.
