Book Review

The Mandarin Club
by Gerald F. Warburg
Bancroft, 2006
www.bancroftpress.com.
ISBN: 1890862452

Anyone hoping to find the heir apparent to Tom Clancy's popular protagonist Jack Ryan in Gerald F. Warburg's The Mandarin Club will be disappointed, but some of us consider this to be a good thing. In The Mandarin Club, the main characters are less Mission Impossible action heroes than collaborative humans with human problems. All seven—Rachel the lobbyist, Alexander the reporter, Branko the CIA guy, Mickey the government technologies dealer, Martin the congressional aide, Lee the Chinese nationalist, and Barry the corporate man of mystery—studied China together at Stanford in the 1970s (aka The Mandarin Club), and each stakes a different path in the current affairs of U.S.-Chinese relations. After moving in their respective circles throughout the years, a crisis brewing between China and Taiwan and the threat of war, not to mention the bombing of Rachel's lobbying firm, bring their paths into collision. How will the members of the Mandarin Club react to China's recent military buildup toward Taiwan? Will they rail on Washington's laissez-faire attitude toward China acquiring American satellite technology, as does Martin's congressional boss, or will they say nothing and to maintain good relations for prominent double dealers in satellite technologies, such as Mickey? Will Alexander break the scandal wide open on the pages of the LA Times, or will he protect the prominent Washington lobbying firms in, such as the one for whom Rachel, his emerging love interest, works?

The Mandarin Club is well-written and engaging, an easy summer page-turner. Although the characters tend to deviate somewhat away from caricature, such as Mickey, the slick businessman who'd rather throw it all away to be home in New Mexico teaching baseball to his Chinese-American sons, or Rachel, the wholesome Midwestern lobbyist who feels her work benefits the powerful and powerless, because there are seven of them, it is hard to delve too deeply into their lives, their personal crises. We know Alexander, whose wife has just died, and Rachel, who is estranged from her secretive husband Barry, are increasingly closer, and we know about Martin's strong religious convictions and family, but no character does or says anything that is completely unexpected, bad or good. Of course, in novels such as these, it's important for all the pieces to fall together, but it would have been nice for at least one character not to learn an empowering, life-changing lesson. Already they are too distant from the Washington movers and shakers they're supposed to emulate.

The firestorm between China, the United States, and Taiwan that results as part of an illegal-but-sincere decision by one of the Mandarin club members is interesting but ultimately anticlimactic—as an ending, it feels so tacked on. Likewise, the woven narrations of the seven characters build a tall, steep hill of a rollercoaster, but there's no similar drop, no thrill. The author has clearly invested a lot in his characters, and to feel leave us feeling so unattached to them at the end is saddening. With a stomach-dropping conclusion to the Mandarin Club, Tom Clancy would have witnessed a serious run to his market share.