CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE

China viewed darkly is the grim backdrop for a disturbing thriller. The year is 2007, and Supt. Mike McKillip, Hong Kong policeman, has been a nonplayer since the handover. Though little more than political window-dressing, he’s stayed on in the hope of a reconciliation with his unenthusiastic Chinese wife and their two children. Thoroughly brainwashed, they view him now as just another arrogant Westerner, blind to the beauty and intricacy of their culture, and hence an enemy. But the status quo is suddenly upended when Mike gets a call from CIA agent Clem Watkins, an old friend and colleague. Clem’s on the run. All sorts of people—mostly, though not exclusively, Chinese—want to kill him for reasons having to do with certain enigmatic goings-on at remote Heshui, a place Mike knows well. Or so he thought. Years earlier, Mike and Clem were part of a clandestine operation aimed at sniffing out Heshui’s secrets. Now, Clem insists, those secrets are both uglier and more dangerous than ever’secrets Li Tuo, head of China’s internal police, would cheerfully murder to keep hidden. But then Li Tuo is ever the cheerful murderer. His targets include Clem, of course; Mike, too, before long; a variety of more or less innocent Westerners; Ling Chen, a brave and resourceful young female patriot; the president of China; and any number of lesser fry. From Hong Kong (“where everyone sleeps with everyone and everybody watches everybody”), the scene shifts to Beijing, Shanghai, Washington, and finally Heshui, where the battle between good and evil is joined and (temporarily) resolved. Veteran journalist and China watcher Hawksley (Dragonstrike, 1999) gets it right in his first try at fictional intrigue: likable heroes, a ferocious villain, and the scariest milieu since the Cold War washed out.