When Daniel Carney’s blockbuster novel Macau was published in the mid-80s just about every reviewer compared it to James Clavell’s phenomenally successful 1960s and ‘70s novels Tai-Pan and Shōgun. Certainly Macau was a “doorstopper” too, just like all Clavell’s bestsellers, at around 500 pages. And Carney clearly sought to capitalise on Clavell’s phenomenal global sales success – both Tai-Pan and Shōgun sold millions of books in multiple languages and were quickly adapted as movies and TV series. So, if the great reading public around the world had devoured Clavell’s tales of the vainglorious British traders who founded Hong Kong or his retelling of foreign involvement in the internecine politics (and wars) of shogunate Japan, then surely a tale set against the long history of Europe’s oldest continuous colony in the Far East was a surefire winner?
Yet, while people still read Tai-Pan, and the new, sumptuous TV production of Shōgun has brought that story a generation new fans, Carney’s novel Macau is all but forgotten, languishing ignored in second-hand bookstores for pennies. Clavell has remained constantly in print while Carney, though he sold respectably at his height, is little remembered today.
Daniel Carney himself led an interesting life. His family had links to China – his father had been posted to Qingdao and Shanghai as a diplomat before World War Two. He had two older sisters, both born in China. Trapped in Japanese-occupied Shanghai the family was part of a prisoner swap and transported to South Africa. They then moved to Beirut where Daniel was born in 1944. Finally, in the early 1960s, Carney settled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), became a colonial policeman, and then a real estate agent. He started writing in his mid-30s aiming squarely for the historical blockbuster novel market that had reigned supreme in airport bookshops throughout the 1970s – Arthur Haley, Jackie Collins, Stephen King, James A Michener etc.
Carney wrote about Rhodesia at first, but it wasn’t until his 1980 novel Under a Raging Sky about a group of mercenary soldiers in 1960s Congo that he hit it big. Hollywood adapted the novel as the Richard Burton and Roger Moore movie, The Wild Geese. He looked around for a new subject that had blockbuster follow-up potential. But coming a couple of years later in 1984 Macau was to tragically be his last book. Carney died in 1987 of cancer aged just 42.
But we still have his novel Macau…
It sold reasonably well when published but soon slipped from the sales charts. Why didn’t it do better? Perhaps because it followed on the heels of Clavell’s 1981 Noble House (the long-awaited follow up to Tai-Pan) and mirrored many of that book’s themes – troubled British Hongs, piracy, dealing with newly communist China etc.
Macau centres on a Macanese criminal organisation – the “Syndicate” – inherited by Crystal Lily whose only ally is a White Russian gold smuggler (with Macau-set novels it’s always gold as regular readers of this column will know!), called the “Snake Boat Man of Macau”. He’s brought out of retirement to help Crystal fight everyone from the 14K triad to scheming Macao casino owners who claim her throne. Lily fights them all for control of the booming Asian heroin smuggling business and the Macao casino world.
The former red-light street of the Rua de Felicidades, the old Protestant Cemetery, the Grand Praia, the Lisboa Hotel, the Leprosaria de Coloane all feature as locations. Though often they don’t quite come to life on the page. Ultimately there’s just a bit too much going on in Macau. A few too many characters to keep straight and subplots to remember – admittedly typical of the 70/80s blockbuster style, but Carney simply doesn’t juggle all the sub-plots and the plethora of characters coming in and out as well as Clavell.
That said, Macau is a decent enough read, even if the Hong Kong descriptions are far better than those of Macau which is slightly annoying given the novel’s title. I’d suggest Carney spent a good deal of time in Hong Kong and maybe only a day trip or two at best to Macao.
Re-reading Clavell’s Tai-Pan follow-up Noble House, Christopher New’s The Chinese Box, or John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy, all give a more vivid sense of time and place (in Hong Kong at least if not always Macao). All have stood the test of time better than Macau too. Carney doesn’t quite hit their mark, reach their high bar, linger as long in the mind afterwards. But, if you’ve got a long flight coming up and you’ve already read, and re-read, all the others, Macau might just help pass the hours.
