The Big Mango
Jake Needham

What happened to the Bank of Vietnam's $400 Million?

From the Big apple, to the Big Orange, to the Big Mango. It had a kind of nutty logic to it, he figured. Bangkok was about as far as he could get from California without falling off the edge of the world. Although at times, he thought that was exactly what he had done.

Eddie Dare was a middle-aged San Francisco lawyer with a sinking feeling that the best part of his life was behind him. But back in 1975, when Saigon slid down the toilet, he'd been a young marine guarding a warehouse behind the U.S. Embassy.

As it happened, that was where Captain Harry Austin had temporarily stashed $400 million, slipped out of the Bank of Vietnam in a shadowy, CIA-run operation. The money vanished after the American evacuation; and so did Harry Austin - at least until his body turned up 20 years later in a muddy street outside a Bangkok massage parlour. When a man calling himself 'the General' dangled a million dollars at Eddie to find out what really happened to Austin - and to all that money - the adventure was too alluring to pass up.

Sucked into the jagged netherworld of Bangkok, the promise of a benign ramble through lavish hotels and low-life bars quickly turned sour. Eddie was soon hurtling breathlessly through a corkscrewed realm where big-time crooks tangoed with small-time hustlers, and the downright scary jostled with the merely raffish for centre stage in the big leagues of crime.

Eddie was running for his life; and there was only one way out. He had to find out what really happened to Harry Austin - and where ten tons of money went.

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Written by an American with the hero a Vietnam Vet. Entertaining, if not gripping story weaving through the usual naughty nightlife spots in Bangkok. A few dead bodies and a psychopathic Vietnamese agent to boot. The story was too far fetched to get me involved.

Considering this to a best seller the only reason I can think is the fact that they give it away free at Bookazine when I bought some other books!! The bulk of the story is good and reasonably well written but the end comes within the very last two pages and seems to be a rush to finish the book - most disappointing.

Consider The Italian Job (film) and that is just about sums up the book in my mind. ALSO this is the only book I have read that you have to be so careful it does not fall to pieces, I ended up with a fist full of loose pages. Just as well I was given the book by the shop otherwise it would have gone back as opposed to the waste bin!!

I read in the Bangkok post that James Gandolfini from The Sopranos is going to Bangkok to make a film of this book.

Also a in The pattayamail

I read it a few years ago. As Mervyn says the ending is a bit hurried but it is an entertaining book otherwise. I will say that the copy I bought was of exellent quality and is still being passed around.