The Mandarin Cypher

Quiller is in Hong Kong, where he thinks he's on vacation. But every alleyway leads dead to danger, and Quiller gets the message: he's never off duty.

The plot moves into a high gear. Quiller always enjoyed his rides, but this one is taxing. He finds a woman as faithless as she is beautiful; he fails to reform her, but enjoys the effort. He takes on villains one, two and three at a time and dispatches them on land with karate and in the South Seas with its aquatic equivalent.