Chinaman's Chance

Rating:
Summary: One of Thomas' jewels; if not his best book
Review: The wily Artie Wu and the often explosive Quincy Durant appear for the first time in this novel.

Throw in a missing actress, a luckless vietnam vet, a fixer connected into the highest circles in Washington, a couple of very bad guys and a fat, Tab-drinking italian killer with his two hoodlums.

Mix it with a couple million bucks under the ground in the ex American embassy in Saigon and a seedy place in Southern California that is so ripe that it has to be perceived as outright rotten.

Then let the master of the double and triple cross weave a plot that's thrilling, entertaining, unpredictable and sometimes outright shocking up to the very end.

Spice it up with some dialogues that are so dry that they can't be outmatched by a swig of Gin, straight from the bottle.

All those components make up one of Thomas' best reads ever.

I consider it to be a shame that so many of his books went out of print.