Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
It’s 1941 and the Japanese have invaded China and set up puppet governments in the provinces. There are two resistance movements; Nationalists and Communists occasionally combining their forces but always basically hostile to each other. Operating in a seething cauldron of power seekers are spies, moles, sleepers, traitors and collaborators, all on the cusp of exposure and vulnerable to the kind of death where a firing squad would be preferable.
In this meta-fiction Mia Jia homes in on an elite city suburb of opulent villas set between mountains and a lake where the invaders have requisitioned an estate. The Tan property is administered by indigenous local officials and currently it houses five Chinese collaborators: expert code breakers, three men and two women. There is a spy among them, an unidentified mole. Apparently, it’s counter-productive to try to expose or reveal hardened agents by torture so the Japanese have evolved a Machiavellian plan to uncover this one incorporating a blend of enforced propinquity and surveillance. The house where the suspects are incarcerated (ostensibly to work on breaking codes) is frequented by counter spies posing as colleagues, and it’s infested with electronic bugs while being observed round the clock from an adjacent building.
The suspects fret and bicker among themselves, confused or dismissive according to character: the spoilt heiress, the cool matron, the police chief, the neurotic fatty. The reader too is in danger of boredom until there’s a flash of light in the tunnel. It transpires that the Japanese have wind of the imminent arrival in the region of a wanted subversive code-named K who is about to perpetrate some momentous disruption. Only by uncovering and then breaking down the mole can the threatened plot be foiled, K captured and the mole eliminated.
Cutting through the welter of intrigue - which oscillates between fiendish subtlety and barbarism - at last we are shown where we stand and we can appreciate the ultimate dilemma. The spy, now code-named Ghost, is indeed here, among the suspects on the Tan property, the imperative being to get a message – the message – out to K to warn him of an ambush. How this is to be achieved is the crux of the story.
The action is sudden and agreeably shocking, preceded by the spy catcher-in-chief, a Japanese colonel, driven mad by frustration, resorting to violence. There are beatings and torture, demonstrations of loyalty, treachery and revenge, and all with an oriental twist. Then, amazingly, with the climax coming only halfway through the book, we have what the author calls the final chapter.
It isn’t final by a long chalk. Now Mia Jia talks directly to the reader, purporting to reveal all in a protracted denouement involving partisan commentaries from survivors and descendants of the actors in this tale, which itself is based on an unsolved murder eighty years ago.
Slow to start but once in you’re hooked. An exotic tease for people who like a different kind of puzzle.
