TYGER! TYGER!

A Munich detective's pursuit of a kinky killer converges with the efforts of an environmental group's hired gun to halt the ongoing slaughter of tigers. James Burlane, the ex-CIA officer who triumphed over yakuza thugs in Japanese Game (1995) is back, this time tracking on assignment for CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) a well-organized ring that has been reducing the world's census of those big cats whose bones and genitals command high prices among Asian manufacturers of homeopathic medicines. With stops along the way in Hong Kong, India, and Siberia, Burlane pursues his quarry to Cebu City in the Philippines, home of CITES' tiger expert, Heinz Tepe, and his Chinese wife Lilly. Meanwhile, Hermann Iversen, a German cop, has been hunting the maniac who paints young girls in tiger stripes before raping and murdering them. Identical homicides have been reported in Vladivostok, Calcutta, and other remote venues. At length, the trail leads Iversen through Mombasa to the Visayan Islands, where his chief suspect, Klaus Neumann, may be holed up. Once in Cebu, Burlane calls on Tepe and (thanks to eavesdropping skills) learns that his nominal boss is trafficking in contraband tiger remains on behalf of Lilly's family firm, a Triad known as Nine Dragons. He also discovers that Neumann, another German national, has been doing the Tepes' dirty work. Iversen (who eventually joins forces with Burlane) arrives in search of Neumann, the son of an animal trainer clawed to death by a tiger in the course of a circus performance. The two professionals manage to complete their mutual mission at the 11th hour, preventing Neumann from claiming a seventh victim, removing a dangerous poacher from a deadly game, and spiriting him to Australia for extradition to Bavaria. For all its exotic settings, a formulaic thriller that offers almost no action or suspense—and Hoyt's notably graceless prose does little to redeem the predictable plot.