Tiger's Tail: A Novel

by Gus Lee

From the author of Honor and Duty and China Boy comes an ingenious thriller set in Korea in 1973—a gripping story of sorrow, corruption and redemption, with plenty of brawls to boot.

A career officer who trained at West Point. The number-one son of a hardworking Chinese family. A soldier still tormented by his tour of duty in Vietnam. Jackson Kan is a man caught in the middle of clashing worlds. Now Kan is bound for Asia once again, this time to the volatile demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. His objective is to track down a missing American investigator, also his closest friend. But in fact, Kan has no idea of the enormity—and the danger—of the mission that awaits him. 

It turns out that the frigid, barren Korean DMZ is at the mercy of Colonel Frederick LeBlanc, known as the Wizard, a Bible-pounding zealot engaged in his own private, paranoid war on communism. Kan quickly uncovers the depravity and corruption of the Wizard's little empire. But only gradually does he piece together the explosive truth about LeBlanc's secret arsenal—a truth that burns like a fuse between Kan's missing friend and the fragile truce of the two Koreas. . . .

Praise for Tiger's Tail

“[Gus] Lee's narrative is irresistible.” — San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

“A dazzling literary thriller.” —Amy Tan

“In the manner of Malraux, Greene, and Le Carré . . . A wise and wrenching novel, beautifully told.” — Publishers Weekly  (starred review)

Genres: War

388 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1995

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon rereading, I bumped this book from three stars to five. Why? I read it too fast last time. This time I luxuriated in the plot, the language, and the historical and cultural knowledge that drives the book. Having spent time in two of the places described in "Tiger's Tail" (minus time in the Ville) several years before the time covered in it (74), I was struck by the strong sense of place. The complexity of the main character, Jackson Hu-chin Kan, driven by a history of loss (the death of his brothers in China, the death of seeming innocents in an ambush carried out by his troops in Nam), is a major strength. The book's spiritual grounding in Confucian thought (Kan was born in China and raised by a Christian father and a Confucian mother) gave it heft I underestimated when I first read it. The crackle of the dialogue, especially among Kan and his team of JAG lawyers, is funny and heart-breaking simultaneously. And it never slows down.

Kan, two other JAG lawyers (each with lethal skills, much like Kan's infantry skills from an earlier life), and a Katusa (Korean army augmentation to the US Army) driver who is monumentally inept are searching for a missing JAG, Kan's good friend, who disappeared while investigating the justice honcho at Camp Casey, home of the 2nd Division, not far south of the DMZ. His disappearance is ominous, for he was investigating a truly corrupt legal administration at Casey. No one is what he or she seems, though the corrupt targets of information are every bit as bad as they seem. And the search, dangerous enough on its own terms, is complicated by the presence of military items that threaten a major war should they be controlled by the wrong people. Wrong people? They could be North Korean, American, or South Korean. If the conclusion is complex, melodramatic, and asks for some suspension of disbelief, Lee has earned the suspension by that time.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reading.

[Devi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me quite awhile to "get into" the story but it is not a bad read. Will read some of his other works.

[Esther Lerner]

Gin is a Chinese word meaning war.