Chinese Agent, The
Michael Moorcock
Language: English
Pages: 160
ISBN: 0583129900
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Kirkus Reviews -
Ex-con Jerry Cornell, product of the seamiest of London's byways and working under duress for British Intelligence, lands right side up in this spottily funny spoof of the Bond-bred genre. When a Chinese-American jewel thief is by mistake handed a package of Red China-bound secrets in the Tower of London (all Chinese look alike), a crew of unlikely originals give chase--Jerry, a top Chinese agent with a poetic imagination, a fading Mata Hari, gals and gaffers, and an Inspector named Crapper. Somehow Peking is sent packing. Has its moments.
published a few years earlier in NEW WORLDS – is a deliberate solarisation of the albino Elric, who was himself a mocking solarisation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, or rather of the mighty-thew-headed Conan created for profit by Howard epigones: Moorcock rarely mocks the true quill. Cornelius, who reaches his first and most telling apotheosis in the four novels comprising The Cornelius Quartet, remains his most distinctive and perhaps most original single creation: a wide boy, an agent, a flaneur,
authority. “Crap-ap-per?” said Mavis Ming looking up. Her tears had turned to laughter. “Chief Inspector Arthur,” said Crapper, brazening it out as he had brazened it out a thousand times before. “Now — this Hodgkiss chap?” “Well, it’s like this, officer,” Jerry said frankly. “This Hodgkiss bloke has something of mine. I’m sure he only meant to borrow it, but I need it back and I hoped to find him here.” “I see.” The Chief Inspector deliberated, rocking on his heels. “Wouldn’t be jewellery,
miss. Nobody’s sure ’e’ll ever come out of the coma. Pity, really. It would have been a good trial — in all the papers.” Crapper could do with a bit of publicity. They’d have to put his name in the papers on this one. The Chief Inspector was convinced that his name was against him — that the papers didn’t like to print a name like his — “because of the connotations”, he would explain to anyone who asked. “Did he have a small package on him?” Jerry asked hopefully. “Ah, well, you see, that’s the
red ache of yearning. Carrying her little suitcase into Cornell’s flat, she gave the place a professional once-over and prepared to get down to business. Jerry Cornell drove the Armstrong-Siddeley into the garage, relieved that he hadn’t been stopped by the law. He walked slowly up to his flat, anticipating his first vision of Shirley. Perhaps there’d be a snack for tea, and then they could put Mavis in front of the television set and go to bed. He smiled sentimentally as he entered the flat.
l-leave the c-country, do anything you ask…” But Cornell continued to smile. He took a step backwards and leaned against the wall of the area. Was it a sign that he agreed? Or was he simply playing with them, as a cat might play with a mouse? Kung and Choong didn’t care as they flashed gratefully past the fiendish Cornell and up the steps and into their Citröen and drove back to Holborn. It was a respite, at least. If they had dared looked back into the area, they might have witnessed an