Counter Attack

Mark Abernethy

Arena / Allen & Unwin (2010)

Adventure stories with an Australian touch are uncommon. Perhaps it is the familiarity of the readers with the places being described that takes some of the edge off what would normally be a good story. Mark Abernethy has overcome this by using Australian characters in more exotic south east Asian cities and settings. The resulting book demands to be made into a full-length feature film.

Australian agent Alan McQueen has come back to the intelligence service from retirement. Instead of the desk job his wife would have preferred he is put on active field service. When a job goes badly wrong in Singapore and two Australians are executed it looks like retirement is again an option. Instead he is given a surveillance job in Saigon. He is to check out an Australian diplomat who seems to be spending a lot of time outside the office on unaccounted-for missions. It may be a simple case of domestic strife or it may be something more sinister. McQueen finds him in the seedy part of downtown Saigon and watches him meet some unidentified men. They swap a computer memory card then the Australian is executed. McQueen is into something deeper than a routine reconnaissance job.

As the story unfolds the magnitude of McQueen’s task almost overwhelms him. There is far more opposition than he anticipated and some of it is coming from his own country’s interdepartmental rivalries. It is hard to tell whose side the Americans are on since their allegiances change whenever somebody can be of use to them. The Israeli hit team has a mission too, but nobody knows what it is – just that a lot of people die around them. The Communist Chinese seem to be involved as well, but their involvement is not clear until later in the book. McQueen also finds himself up against the Chinese Tongs, criminal gangs who control most of the major crime in south east Asia.

The story is fast-moving and wide ranging, from the rich financiers homes of Singapore to a child slave camp in the jungle of Cambodia. We are spared nothing of the seedy side of Asia where life is so cheap.

The characterisation is less important than the action, but in McQueen we see a man loyal to his country but operating pretty much on his own because he doesn’t know which of his countrymen he can trust. His contacts from the past help a lot. He is pushed to his limits and looks like being another victim until he starts playing the game by the opposition’s rules – dirty and violent. There is so much wheeling and dealing and double crossing that it’s a wonder the book isn’t longer.

I don’t get to read much fiction, but this was a book I read in two very long sessions of “just another couple of pages”. I wasn’t disappointed.

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