Published by House of Anansi Press/Spiderline on January 21, 2020 (digitial) and February 4, 2020 (paperback)
Foresight is an enjoyable addition to Ian Hamilton’s engaging look at Chinese triad villains who, villainy notwithstanding, embody traditions of loyalty and honor. Foresight is set in the early 1980s. It focuses on Chow Tung, known to all as Uncle. Fans of Hamilton’s excellent Ava Lee series will recognize Uncle as the mysterious force behind the series heroine.
While Ava Lee books are action novels, the Uncle novels (Foresight is the second, following Fate) are more in the nature of political suspense novels. The political dimensions are both internal, as Hong Kong Triad factions alternate between competing and cooperating, and external, as Uncle begins doing business in a Chinese economic zone, evoking memories of the life he fled as a much younger man. It turns out that, for Uncle, the present might be just as dangerous as the past.
Uncle grew up in Wuhan (long before COVID-19), but after a perilous swim across Shenzhen Bay, Uncle began to pay his dues as a gang member in Hong Kong. He eventually worked his way to the top of the Fanling Triad, holding the position of Mountain Master. His goal is to move the business into avenues that are honest (more or less) and sustainable, a goal that takes on some urgency when Hong Kong permits six legal off-track betting shops to complete with Uncle’s illegal shops. Even when he operates in ways that might transgress the law — other forms of gambling, massage parlors, and night markets — he has made clear to local law enforcement that he will not engage in loansharking or allow drug dealing in Fanling. The police are therefore willing to tolerate him as a semi-respectable businessman.
When China opens economic zones to encourage the production and export of goods, Uncle senses an opportunity. Not an entirely legitimate opportunity, since he’s looking at expanding the market for knockoff Lacoste clothing that the Triad sells in night markets. He invests in the Chinese company from which he buys the fake Lacostes, enlarges the line by adding other designer brands, and moves from there to designer jeans. To spread the bounty, he encourages other Hong Kong Triads to work with other economic zones to produce handbags, shoes, and other counterfeit goods. There is money to be made.
The entrepreneurial story is interesting, but the plot takes off when Uncle — who has naturally greased certain Chinese officials — finds himself used as the pawn in a political war. He is detained on a trip to China and comes to understand that if he wants to make it home to Hong Kong alive, he will need to rat out one of the government officials who has been protecting him. Will Uncle save his own skin or will he die an honorable death?
Uncle might be a criminal, but’s he’s an easy character to like. He still mourns the loss of a woman who, more than twenty years earlier, did not survive the swim to Hong Kong. He has earned the respect of his gang members by listening to them and treating them fairly. He is calm and rational, rarely losing his cool. Even the competing Mountain Masters (or at least most of them) respect his integrity, not to mention his ability to earn profits without making waves. It is hard not to root for such a decent person, unless you are in the chain of command at Lacoste.
The plot is all the more interesting because of its setting. Hamilton delves into modern Chinese political history from the Cultural Revolution to the economic reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping. Deng even earns a cameo. While a good many crime novels that are set in America seem to be clones of each other, Hamilton gives his stories a fresh taste by steeping them in unfamiliar flavors. The novel is straightforward; Hamilton never tries to position the story as a great literary work. He instead puts likeable characters in challenging situations, introduces a credible degree of suspense, and creates an easy read that is both enlightening and entertaining.
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