Marlon Brando, Donald Cammell Fan-Tan

Fan-Tan

Marlon Brando, Donald Cammell

Knopf, Sep 2005, $23.95

ISBN: 1400044715

In 1927, fifty-one year old Captain Anatole "Annie" Doultry, serves six-months in a Victoria Gaol in Hong Kong, for violating the Arms and Ammunition Ordinance of 1900. Hong Kong enjoys being the market place of the Pacific, where items such as the gun shipment, Annie legally brought with him, was bona-fide cargo heading to Shantung, Republic of China, but he got an offer in the city that he could not refuse. Thus he is doing "soft" time for selling without a license.

While in prison he saves the life of Hai Sheng, accused of piracy, by claiming the China man is his cook. Once Annie completes his sentence, that whimsical good deed he performed for Hai, brings him to the attention of the criminal's mob boss Madame Lai Choi San, better known as Mountain of Wealth. She offers Annie a deal to join her in hi-jacking the British ship SS Chow Fa, carrying a fortune in silver. Of course Annie cannot resist the lure of the booty, or the siren call of Lai. The adventure and danger on the high seas has just begun.

This is a terrific "throwback" action-packed pirate saga, filled with the atmosphere of 1920's Hong Kong and China, while starring a larger than life roguish anti-hero, mindful of Captain Blood, but in the Pacific. The support cast, especially the mysterious and enticing Madame Lai, augments the feeling that the audience is visiting the early twentieth century Asiatic Pacific rim, while also allowing the readers to better understand the Scotsman. FAN-TAN is a fabulous adventure tale.