Action, adventure, romance, thrills ~ The White Brigand has it all.
This vintage pulp paperback fairly leapt of the shelves into my hands. Intriguing cover, in great shape, and in a Dell mapback edition.
Mapbacks are among the best known vintage paperbacks and were (and remain) very popular. These were the earliest paperback books published by Dell Books, starting in 1943 with number 5, before fading out around 1951. These could be romance, westerns or adventures, but mainly in the mystery genre. The back of the compact paperback features an illustrated map detailing where the action takes place. These are numbered on the front cover with an eye-in-the-keyhole logo, and The White Brigand is number 144.
Inside the cover of a mapback is often a list of Persons This Mystery Is About, and What This Mystery Is About - a brief description of the action to entice you, such as...
A dead man's VOICE floating on the wind across a lonely, frozen lake... A terrifying THING which seems to take possession of a man...FOOTPRINTS which seem to begin nowhere; end nowhere... A weird, flying, man-like CREATURE!
Sometimes there are a few lines of Wouldn't You Like To Know -- as in Mary Roberts Rinehart's Haunted Lady...
Who - or what - filled the nights with terror for a sick old lady?
Who belonged to the shadow which crept stealthily from stable to house carrying something bulky?
Who locked the nurse away from the desperately wounded young girl?
What secret lovely, frightened Jan shares with the young doctor?
Of course I'd like to know!
I have found many great authors after first being attracted to the map back, but the writer of The White Brigand was the most exciting. Edison Marshall was a prolific writer from 1917 to 1967, winning the O. Henry Memorial Prize in 1921.
"Old legends told of the existence of a mountain of jade in the remote fastnesses of Western China, but it's exact location had been lost in the mists of time".
The adventure starts in Shanghai's Cathay Hotel, where young June Harte has travelled with family friend Doctor Harper and Dimitri, a Russian interpreter. She was a girl when last in China with her father, travelling through the mountains in search of Chinese jade. They found it, but it couldn't be taken out, and June has returned after his passing to claim it. She has no map, but remembers the location. Very quickly they are spotted by Lee Kiang, foster son of the overlord Prince Kiang and his henchmen, tricked into a meeting, and kidnapped! They know June is the only one who can lead them to the jade, which Prince Kiang wants for himself. Taken to a waiting plane and flown into a mountainous area, June grabs a parachute and leaps out into the wild jungle. Her parachute lands in a village of headhunters - and that is just the first few chapters!
June is sweet and pretty, but also feisty and ready to throw herself into any danger to secure the jade mountain. Quite a heroine for a novel written in 1937!
The story rolls along with the breathless pace of an Indiana Jones movie as they travel through the mountains to Chwanben, the palace compound of Prince Kiang. His son, Lee Kiang was born American but raised in the palace and is torn between June's plight and the duty to the will of his father. His character is very well written, as his tough and cold exterior of a General is melted by June's charms. Yes, there is romance and heroism as well as diabolical subterfuge. Soon June's life is threatened by everything from a sniper as she crosses a chasm on a treacherous rope bridge, to her party being thrown into the palace dungeons. She herself becomes a prisoner in the magnificent palace, once the home of the exiled Dalai Lama.
In this Lost Horizon setting they play a fast game of love and death, where the stakes are a king's ransom in jade and the kingdom itself.
I had high hopes for thrills and adventure and The White Brigand is one of the most entertaining adventures I have read. Satisfying on every level.
There is much more to the story that I won't give away here! and if you are partial to old fashioned daring adventure, I hope you can find a copy and read it for yourself. You'll love it.
1937 / Vintage Paperback / 238 pages
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