Gavin Black: The Bitter Tea (UK 1975)

From the Publisher:
The two men had their heads masked by nylon stockings. One had got across the ditch and was waiting for me. I turned back towards the other in the road, and went straight for him, jack-knifing my body down, my head in his stomach. His breath exploded, a snake's head with nylon sucked into the hole of a mouth. But it wasn't a contest between two. A kick in the groin reminded me of that. And then I saw a hand with a cosh in it...

"Immensely exciting... the background is a delight." -- Spectator

Gavin Black: The Bitter Tea. A Paul Harris Thriller. London: Fontana, 1975, ISBN: 0006139884, 189 p., 50p.

Gavin Black: The Bitter Tea (USA 1972)

From the Publisher:
Paul Harris's Scottish shipyard was in financial trouble, and even his Singapore ship-breaking firm wasn't too surprising, considering all the political unrest (to put it mildly) in Southeast Asia.

In Malaysia, to cheer himself up, Paul went to Kuala Lumpur, to a hill resort within an hour's ride of the capital city. In the past, when he'd scaled the mountain top, he'd found there before an open fireplace in a small inn. But instead of the inn, the hotel was now a hundred-bedroom hotel - with a gambling casino. It wasn't at all what he'd had in mind - until, standing beside one of the tables, he saw a girl. Almost certainly a Thai, beautiful. She wore a green silk jacket and trousers, and her earrings were gold and diamonds.

She let him buy her a drink. She said she ran a restaurant in Bangkok. She was a divorcee.
She didn't stay with him, then, for long, because a helicopter came in, with one of Chou En Lai's associates on it, a man named Li Feng Tsu. Who was, soon thereafter, shot at.
Paul Harris, chief superintendent Kang of the Singapore police, said to Paul, "It was not an assassination attempt."
And Kang, who'd been Paul's friend in the past, seemed distinctly less friendly.

GAVIN BLACK is so at home in the East that he can walk through its turmoil, the excitement, the danger, and the heartbreak with a sure foot and an observant eye.

His story is exciting, his people involve one immediately, and his book makes for superb reading.

Gavin Black: The Bitter Tea. A Harper novel of suspense. New York: Harper & Row, 1972, ISBN: 006010371X, 218 p., $5.95.