THE CHINESE BANDIT

Stephen Becker

VG/VG. Slight wear to jacket; spine slightly cocked; small marginal coffee stain on last four pages. Still a sound copy overall. (NY: Random House, 1975). First Edition. Two-page frontispiece map, 305 pages.

...Set against the turmoil of China in 1947, when guerrillas, war lords, Japanese deserters, the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists were crisscrossing the countryside, the novel begins in Peking and ends in the snowy mountains of Central Asia. The Chinese bandit is Jake Dodds, a brawling, drinking, womanizing Marine sergeant of thirty-one, wartime hero and peacetime bum, fluent in Chinese and conniving on the black market with a fat, wily, old entrepreneur named Kao. When Jake clobbers a general in a whorehouse brawl and nearly kills him, his future looks like tne-to-twenty in Leavenworth. But Kao has a plan, and smuggles him out of Peking with a camel caravan headed west, as guardian of some rare merchandise. Within the next few months Jake discovers that he is not the only bandit in China, that he is not finished with killing, and that he knows nothing about women or about himself. He learns the hard way...

Originally published at $8.95, now OUT OF PRINT.

$30.00