Saigon Singer

Hugh North #18

by F. Van Wyck Mason

Saigon Singer by F. Van Wyck Mason in Hardcover.

Genres: Mystery

311 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

aka Geoffrey Coffin, Frank W. Mason, Ward Weaver

Francis Van Wyck Mason (November 11, 1901 – August 28, 1978, Bermuda) was an American historian and novelist. He had a long and prolific career as a writer spanning 50 years and including 65 published novels.

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hugh North goes to Saigon to find a traitor who sold out to the Japanese. He finds two of them. Of course we get a few murders, some vintage era CSI, and a bevy of willing women.

The most compelling part of the book is the setting, a Vietnam before the war and the communists.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was five years between the last pre World War II (for the US) Hugh North mystery and Saigon Singer, his first postwar North novel, which Van Wyck Mason published in 1946. And it seems it was an eager reunion on the author's part. Why? Because this is the most richly detailed book in the series that I've so far read. As the title indicates, it's set in French Indochina. The sense of Saigon and Southeast Asia Mason creates is quite an experience. It seems authentic enough. The perspiration generating heat and humidity, the plantations, colonial houses, crumbling temples, and the overwhelming greenery which is only eclipsed by the scorching sun. Mason even manages to throw in oblique cultural references that if you're not careful will fly past you, such as the quick mention of the Monkey King without directly quoting the The Journey to the West. From the standpoint of atmosphere and sense of place and time, I can't think of a better postwar mystery.

That doesn't mean Saigon Singer doesn't have its flaws. To furnish his story with such verisimilitude, Mason sometimes sacrifices the sense of pace and allows himself to wallow in elaborate set pieces, instead of advancing the plot. Still, that plot is an interesting one: this time, North is on a mission to recover a master list of traitors, collaborators, and sell-outs who sided with the Japanese during the war and caused the deaths of untold numbers of their fellow countrymen. And I enjoyed the climax of the story, which takes place at an all but unknown village outside of Saigon, Bien Hoa. Yes, the same Bien Hoa that became the site of a major American airbase during the Vietnam War and a sprawling suburb of Saigon.

Also apparent is the quandary such spy novels as the North series were undergoing in 1946. The Axis was thoroughly defeated. But there was as yet no Cold War. China belonged to the Nationalists, American allies. And the Soviet Union was still benefiting from the image of Stalin as part of the Big Three, not a new foe to face for the next fifty years. So in many ways, this book provides a unique look at the postwar landscape before things had shaken out and the postwar world with its rivalries and proxy wars was made much clearer.

One other thing that I think I've mentioned before in connection with these North mysteries. And that is Ian Fleming had to have been familiar with them. Because his James Bond looks to have been lifted from Van Wyck Mason's intelligence agent, Hugh North.