All Lieutenant Jack French ever wanted to do was to be the best fighter pilot in the US Navy. But a mid-air collision caused by a cocky subordinate landed him in the hospital. Grounded and spending too much time preying on nurses and swilling whiskey, French finds himself assigned to Naval Intelligence. With the promise of one day returning to flying status he finds himself booking fight time aboard the China Clipper instead. Revenge of the Dragon Lady pits French up against a dangerous adversary, Imperial Japan’s Kempeitai. Like its German counterpart, the Gestapo, the Kempeitai is plotting ways to subvert the will of free peoples.
Set in the Philippines two years before Pearl Harbor, French is one of the first of the US Navy to find himself in direct combat with the forces of Japan and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The islets of the South China Sea, so prominent in today’s news stories are the location for the novel’s denouement.
In July of 1941, Franklin Roosevelt knowing that war with Japan cannot be far off, calls upon his old friend Captain Leon Agourides of the Naval Intelligence Service to get someone up into French Indochina to recover gold and arms that were destined for the Chinese Nationalists. Indochine Gold finds Jack French still grounded and mourning the death of his wife. In this story, now Lieutenant Commander Jack French boards a navy PBY Catalina for an arduous flight back out to the Philippines.
Sneaking into Japanese occupied French Indochina is risky enough but getting out alive is even riskier. The Vichy French have ceded control of the country to their new overlords from Tokyo. With the local Kempeitai on the lookout for any intruders, French, accompanied by a gorgeous news-hungry reporter are forced to keep low. The only people he can trust are the operatives of the Viet Minh. Striking a deal with them, he gets what he needs for the president, then has to find a way out of the country – for both of them.
