Book Review: Thin Air by William Marshall – A Yellowthread Street Story

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I've been reading William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels on and off for decades, but for some reason it's always a few years between reading each book. This is a series of mystery novels set in Hong Kong, in the days when it was still a British colony. He started writing them in the 70s and carried on with the series until the handover in 1997, and they're contemporary with the times he was writing them. It's a series of police procedurals centring on the activities of a quirky and diverse squad of detectives based in the Yellowthread Street Police Station, in the fictional Hong Kong district of Hong Bay. The squad is led by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer, a native of Hong Kong, but of European descent. His loyal deputy is Christopher O'Yee, an American of mixed Irish and Chinese parentage. Rounding out the squad are two British junior detectives, Spencer and Auden, who do most of the footwork and always seem to be bickering about one thing or another. Hong Bay is the sort of district that every big city seems to have – full of small businesses, casual workers struggling to make a living, and violent gangsters. It's the area of Hong Kong that tourists are warned to stay away from at night. The cops at Yellowthread Street seem to be permanently underfunded and overworked. This particular novel was first published in 1977. The story starts on a quiet day. Auden and Spencer are out investigating reports of a strange smell in a sewer, and Feiffer and O'Yee are relaxing in the office when Feiffer gets a phone call. The phone call is from a man speaking Cantonese who describes himself as “Number Two”, working on behalf of hsi anonymous “Principal”. Using overly-polite language riddled with business jargon, Number Two informs Feiffer that a “lethal device” has been placed on a plane that has just departed from Kai Tak Airport, bound for Japan. This is by way of a demonstration before “negotiations” begin. Feiffer passes on the message to Superintendent Dobbs, head of security at Kai Tak Airport, who writes the threat off as a crank call and resents Feifer for bothering him. Dobbs is a nasty piece of work – a British cop who's been stationed in Hong Kong for 18 years but only bothered to learn the bare minimum of Cantonese to qualify for his job, he regards all Chinese as stupid and promotes Europeans to all the top jobs in his department. Feiffer and Dobbs take an immediate dislike to each other. While this is going on, Auden and Spencer have been escorted down the sewer by two of the sewer workers to investigate the strange smell. It's coming from a hole in the wall that leads to an abandoned water channel and the detectives immediately recognise the smell as burnt cordite. On further investigation, the water channel contains half a dozen dead bodies – all of them killed with a sub-machine gun. Meanwhile, the plane headed from Hong Kong to Japan turns around and returns to Kai Tak Airport without permission. The reason is that the crew are too traumatised to describe what's happened over the radio – the passengers have all died. Tests show that the in-flight meals were poisoned. Number Two phones back. He always phones Feiffer instead of Dobbs, despite the fact that Kai Tak Airport is outside Feiffer's area of responsibility – the reason is supposedly because Feiffer is well-respected in the district, whereas Dobbs is ignorant and difficult to deal with. Number Two says that more lethal devices have been planted on other planes and that his Principal wants a cash payout of a hundred thousand American Dollars, delivered in person by Feiffer. Dobbs agrees to supply Feiffer with the cash, in the hopes of preventing more deaths and catching Number Two and the Principal later. But despite the fact that Feiffer is in charge of delivering the money, Dobbs can't resist interfering, with disastrous results. What follows is the destruction of a second plane, through sabotage of the landing gear this time. Followed by demands for more money from Number Two and his mysterious Principal. Pursuing the parallel investigation of the bodies down the sewer, Spencer and Auden are kept busy showing mortuary photographs of the victims around and interviewing people who may have known them. There's a heavy emphasis on police procedure in these stories. None of the characters are deductive geniuses, they get results through sheer hard work and perseverance, plus the ability to take advantage of any lucky breaks that come their way. This is probably a fare portrayal of how real police investigations work, although it's set against the exotic backdrop of Hong Kong, with its mix of cultures. The team's investigations bring them into contact with a variety of colourful and eccentric characters, including two chemists who keep arguing over expenses, a British Army tank officer who resents the fact that he's been posted to Hong Kong to deliver lectures on the subject of tank warfare despite the fact that the local garrison doesn't have any tanks, and a Chinese small businessman who operates out of a low-rent office but has big ambitions and wears a Rolex. And while these two investigations go on, turning up some surprising evidence along with the inevitable red herring, the feud between Feiffer and Dobbs escalates to the point where each is accusing the other of being the Principal. The story builds towards a violent and suspenseful climax, with the identity of the mastermind behind the attacks being a surprise to me – although the clues were there in the story, if I'd picked up on them. I've always found the most entertaining aspects of the Yellowthread Street novels to be the characters and dialogue. The criminal plots are certainly cleverly constructed, but it's the interaction between both the regular characters and the people they meet in their investigations that always stays with me. “Thin Air” is no exception, and I found it a thoroughly entertaining read. Call it 8/10. I'll try not to leave it another ten years before I read the next book!