The Ninja

If there's one book I should absolutely love, it's The Ninja by Eric van Lustbader, published in 1980. It was written during my favorite era for thrillers (late 1970s to early 1980s), and features many of my favorite story elements: ninjas, assassins, eastern mysticism, old vendettas and international intrigue. A New York Times bestseller, the novel was one of the early catalysts (along with the films The Octagon and Enter the Ninja) for the "ninja boom" of the 1980s. Though inexplicably never made into a movie (as discussed in this excellent post), it was the first popular portrayal of ninjas in Western literature (with the exception of Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice, which featured them briefly).

The story concerns the trials and tribulations of Nicholas Linnear, son of an American diplomat and a Chinese mother who grew up in post-war Japan. Linnear was trained in martial arts from a young age, his excellence culminating in him becoming the first non-Japanese allowed to train in the most deadly and secret martial art of all: ninjutsu. But after his parents are killed, the mystically-inclined young warrior moves to the alien world of the USA and has to learn the mysterious ways of the West.

As the story opens, Linnear has quit his job as a successful graphic designer living in New York City, feeling burned out and longing to return to the land of his youth. He meets a beautiful rich girl named Justine who arouses his passion and gives him a new focus, but her relationship to her ruthless billionaire industrialist father, Raphael Tomkin, will soon draw him into a deadly web of intrigue. When a co-worker is found murdered in a mysterious manner, poisoned by a weapon that Linnear is able to identify as a ninja shuriken, Linnear's inner shadow warrior begins to awaken. As more people close to Linnear and Tomkin are killed in exotic and brutal fashion, and it becomes clear that both are at the center of a deadly vendetta, Linnear must call upon all his ninja training to survive.

The plot gets increasingly complex from here, as more characters are introduced  and a backstory involving World War II-era Japanese industrialists, corrupt American officials and a grand conspiracy of industrial espionage and revenge plays out on the streets of New York and the corridors of power in the USA and Japan. We meet the evil ninja Saigo responsible for the killings, and the NYC detective Lew Croaker tasked with investigating them--a tough, cynical bastard who isn't afraid to bend the law to do what's right.

This novel features one of the earliest examples of a trope that would become a cliche: Linnear's boyhood rival in the ninja dojo, Saigo, resentful of the half-breed gaijin, grows up to be a sinister "black ninja" and Linnear's deadly arch-enemy. For me Saigo was the clear star of the story. Though an extremely twisted individual, whose vices include pedophilia, sadism, murder, drug use and hypnotic mind control, he has that relentless, amoral, unstoppable quality that makes characters like Parker or the Terminator so compelling. The climactic finale sets the tone for many classic 1980s ninja films, as Saigo hunts his prey up a skyscraper and the two ninjas meet high above the city to settle their score once and for all.

As awesome as all this sounds, I have to admit that the book's execution was somewhat lacking. The main problem is that van Lustbader's writing is excessive: there's too much descriptive detail, too much literary pretension, too many unlikable characters, too many subplots, too much gratuitous sex, too much soap opera melodrama and too much unconvincing mysticism. What should have been a riveting thriller was too often a pretentious slog. If he had stripped out the excess, cutting off at least 100 pages and making this a much tighter story, he might have produced a classic.

If you want to read a thriller with similar elements by a much better writer that doesn't take itself too seriously, try Shibumi by Trevanian. Or, for a stripped-down, pulpier version of the same basic story, try Ninja Master #5: Black Magician, by Wade Barker.

As it is, I still enjoyed The Ninja for the ninja violence, mysticism, intrigue, and dark, Nietzschean sensibility, but I can't give it my highest rating. Recommended for fans of the genre.

Get a copy of The Ninja here.

The Peking Target

After the over-the-top novel Chant, I was in the mood for something more realistic and better written, but with many of the same elements: 1980s action, a sinister Eastern mystic, martial arts assassins, and an ultra-skilled Western shadow warrior who takes them on. The Peking Target, published in 1982, fit the bill nicely; it's the tenth installment in the brilliant Quiller series by Elleston Trevor (writing as Adam Hall).

As the story opens, "shadow executive" Quiller is watching a body being fished out of the Thames river, which we learn is that of a fellow Bureau operative who had just arrived from Peking with a most urgent and sensitive message for his superiors. Unfortunately, the agent was murdered on his way from the airport and his secret message died with him. Quiller himself is nearly killed when a car rams him as he's leaving the murder scene. It's apparent that something very sinister is going on in Peking, which someone is willing to kill British agents on their home soil to protect. So the Bureau sends Quiller, still banged up from the hit attempt, to China to investigate.

The assassinations escalate dramatically after Quiller arrives in Peking under cover as a security man for the British delegation. The British Secretary of State is blown sky high right next to Quiller during the funeral of the Chinese premiere, his body absorbing the blast and saving the agent from serious injury. Then the American ambassador is taken out, and Quiller evades another murder attempt on the street—only his superior martial arts skill saving him from death at the hands of his skilled assailant. Two more agents are killed just before Quiller can get the information they had about the assassins, one found dead in the coils of his own pet boa constrictor. While all this is going on, Quiller learns that a mysterious figure named Tung Kuo-feng is involved—a Triad leader who commands a team of elite assassins but whose whereabouts is unknown. After the beautiful Li-fei is sent to kill Quiller, thinking that he killed her brother, a Triad assassin, Quiller learns that Tung is holed up in a former monastery on a mountain in a remote part of South Korea.

The novel shifts into overdrive for the final third as Quiller begins his set piece mission: to air-drop near the mountain before dawn, make his way stealthily to the monastery, infiltrate the grounds, take out Kuo-feng and get out without getting killed by his retinue of assassins. It's a tall order, but Quiller is the late 20th century British equivalent of a ninja, so if anyone can do it he can! The mission is further complicated by the assignment of a female guide who is a skydiving expert, mountaineer and fluent Korean speaker, as Quiller normally works alone. As usual with Quiller missions, things go sideways almost immediately and the executive is forced to improvise. Without providing too many spoilers, Quiller faces some brutal adversity but manages to get to the monastery, where he discovers that other world powers are involved who are using the assassinations to spread chaos for a nefarious geopolitical purpose.

This was probably the most fast-paced, action-packed Quiller installment I've read. Quiller is a real ninja in this one, who showcases his impressive range of skills: he kills men with his bare hands (he never carries a gun), evades pursuers by floating under debris on a river, air-drops into enemy territory by night, evades and ambushes a sniper, sends cleverly coded messages to deceive his captors, escapes a cell, sneaks around a well-guarded enemy compound, creates a diversionary explosion, flies a helicopter, and gets into an incredible mental battle with Kuo-fong in which the Triad leader showcases his impressive "ki" powers to try to control Quiller. Though never cartoonish, this one is slightly over the top by Trevor's standards. I suspect he was influenced by the success of Eric van Lustbader's blockbuster 1980 novel The Ninja and similar works of that era, and decided to turn up the ninja elements in this one. There was something in the zeitgeist of the early 1980s that produced a lot of great spy/assassin/ninja thrillers, and this is another one to add to the list. Great read.

Get a copy of The Peking Target here.

Chant

In the 1980s, Asian martial arts and mysticism were a very popular motif in men's adventure books and movies. I have entire shelves of novels from that era about lethal ninja assassins, sinister Eastern mystics and Western martial arts masters trained in the East, often combined with a larger geopolitical narrative involving payback from World War II, the Vietnam War, or the ambitions of  modern-day Japan or China. I am a big fan of this sub-genre, so when I learned about an obscure three-book series about a Western martial arts master and shadow warrior called Chant, I decided to give the first book a read.

"Chant" is the alias of John Sinclair, an almost superhuman character who is like an ultimate 1980s action hero cross between Jason Bourne, Joe Armstrong (American Ninja) and Rambo. His backstory is a familiar one in ninja fiction: a Westerner raised in post-World War II Japan, trained in the most lethal martial arts by Japan's greatest masters, a man so gifted that he is taken as an apprentice by Master Bai, the sinister Sensei of a sect of ninjas who harness the power of the Black Flame—the inner darkness and passion that breaks the bonds of traditional martial arts honor to produce the ultimate human killing machines. Later, Sinclair enlists in the U.S. military, where he becomes an elite commando who puts his skills to work killing Communists behind enemy lines in Southeast Asia. In the process he becomes a revered hero of the Hmong people of Laos, who are fiercely resisting the brutal Pathet Lao guerrillas. For reasons that are unclear, Sinclair is betrayed by his own commanders and attacked by CIA assassins, but he manages to kill them and escape. From that point on, Sinclair is a Jason Bourne-like fugitive from shadowy elements of the US government—a master assassin who has become expendable.

A decade and a half later, Sinclair learns that some of his beloved Hmong have immigrated to the USA, where they are being enslaved and terribly abused by a very nasty family of rich industrialists called the Baldaufs. With his strong sense of honor and loyalty to the Hmong, who saved his life during the war, Sinclair goes on the warpath to destroy the Baldaufs and free the Hmong from their tyranny. Sinclair begins hunting down and killing off the industrialists and their henchmen using his superhuman martial arts skills. He employs the clever stratagem of approaching the head of the Baldauf family in the guise of an operative of a secret US agency that wants Sinclair dead, and is willing to help Baldauf for a fee. Sinclair essentially hunts himself with Baldauf's cooperation, while in the process gaining inside knowledge of the industrialists' operations so he can more effectively sabotage them.

As all this is going on, Master Bai arrives on the scene, having also been hired by Baldauf to find and eliminate John Sinclair. Bai brings with him three gigantic henchmen and his beautiful granddaughter Soussan, who is as lethal as she is seductive. Chant finds himself irresistibly attracted to Soussan, despite knowing that she is probably Bai's ultimate weapon to destroy him. Because Bai is not simply out to kill Sinclair for rejecting the Black Flame cult, but to prove its superiority by defeating Chant in an elaborate mental and martial arts contest. The whole thing gets a little ridiculous at this point, as Chant is challenged to defeat Bai's henchmen, Soussan, and Bai himself, on the threat of his Hmong friends being killed. What follows is a series of staged combats with each henchman, interspersed with Chant's inner confusion about whether Soussan is a sinister seductress or a sincerely changed woman who wants only to be with Chant and leave the Black Flame behind. The twist ending is violent, melodramatic, ridiculous and mystical, much like this book.

Chant is well-written pulp fiction that reminds me of an Eric van Lustbader novel of that era, at a fraction of the length and with the unnecessary subplots and pretentious writing stripped out. Which should make for a good read. And Chant is a pretty good read, if you don't mind characters who are too over the top, too skilled, too good and too evil to take seriously. Sinclair is very impressive, but he lacks charisma and never really makes you care about him—he's like a colder, more brutal and inhuman Mack Bolan. I mean, Mack has no compunctions about blowing away bad guys Dirty Harry-style, but Sinclair takes it to another level, gruesomely murdering people (even puppies!) in a manner usually reserved for villains. He may have a sense of honor, but he also has a streak of Master Bai's Black Flame still burning in his soul that allows him to kill without mercy. Anyway, if you're a sucker for this genre like me you'll probably enjoy this book despite its flaws.

Get a copy of Chant here.