This was a lush, picturesque tale set in the fictional island of Mancreu in the Arabian Sea. Mancreu, steeped in Arab, African and Asian tradition, is on the brink of human-induced extinction due to a chemical experiment gone bad.
Sergeant Lester Ferris is one of the last good guys -- a lonely British officer who gets reassigned to the island before retirement prior to the island's demise, only to get caught up in some big time intrigue involving dog murders, drug smuggling and international crime on the high seas. Along the way he meets a precocious native boy known only as Robin (self-named after Batman's sidekick), a charasmatic, tech-savvy, 12-year-old who loves the comics and is fond of sayings like,"Zomg". Robin and Lester join forces, cooking up a unique, yet frightening plan to foil one of the island's more unsavory characters. I don't want to spoil the story, so suffice it to say it has to do with, oh, saving the world. And as the end of days loom large on this about-to-be-destroyed isle, Ferris has his heart set on learning the kid's true identity and saving him, with the ultimate desire of becoming a father and adopting Robin as his son.
The novel is both highly imaginative and beautifully written (the author is John LeCarre's son, by the way) and in some ways, reminded me of a blend of The Year of Living Dangerously, James Bond and South Pacific. I had to keep reminding myself that it was a modern-day story, since it kind of came off as a WWII plot. Nonetheless, Tigerman would make for a great big movie - complex, colorful characters in an exotic locale, set against an an exciting, adventurous and sexy plot.
This 2014 novel was chosen for Week 11: a book related to one of the 12 Zodiac Chinese Animals (title, cover, subject).
Sergeant Lester Ferris is one of the last good guys -- a lonely British officer who gets reassigned to the island before retirement prior to the island's demise, only to get caught up in some big time intrigue involving dog murders, drug smuggling and international crime on the high seas. Along the way he meets a precocious native boy known only as Robin (self-named after Batman's sidekick), a charasmatic, tech-savvy, 12-year-old who loves the comics and is fond of sayings like,"Zomg". Robin and Lester join forces, cooking up a unique, yet frightening plan to foil one of the island's more unsavory characters. I don't want to spoil the story, so suffice it to say it has to do with, oh, saving the world. And as the end of days loom large on this about-to-be-destroyed isle, Ferris has his heart set on learning the kid's true identity and saving him, with the ultimate desire of becoming a father and adopting Robin as his son.
The novel is both highly imaginative and beautifully written (the author is John LeCarre's son, by the way) and in some ways, reminded me of a blend of The Year of Living Dangerously, James Bond and South Pacific. I had to keep reminding myself that it was a modern-day story, since it kind of came off as a WWII plot. Nonetheless, Tigerman would make for a great big movie - complex, colorful characters in an exotic locale, set against an an exciting, adventurous and sexy plot.
This 2014 novel was chosen for Week 11: a book related to one of the 12 Zodiac Chinese Animals (title, cover, subject).