Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
... I wonder if serialization was the reason for what seemed to me the abrupt end of this story?
|
Possibly, although it didn't seem to be a cliff-hanger ending.
For me, it seemed almost a typical 1930s pulper, until the end. I suppose that explains the No Hero title. The ending saved the book for me.
Moto is the most interesting character. We see very little of him, but he seems the opposite of what we would expect for a spymaster - although he is equipped with a hiss at the first meeting.
I wondered about Lee's early rant about FDR going off the gold standard, which fits in with his past (fighting in Poland against the Reds and against the Riff uprising in Spanish Morocco). Was that red meat for the probable readership of the novel, going for the Kansas market?
The remark about trade was interesting: "They're getting so that they can beat us at all our manufacturing trade. But we can't stop them, can we?"
Likewise, this seemed quite prescient: "explained why Japan watched with unconcealed misgivings the construction of our airplane carriers and the development of Chinese and Russian aviation. A few incendiary bombs were all that would be needed to bring about almost unimaginable disaster, and I had been told that the inflammability of Osaka and other great industrial nerve centers of the Empire was even more pronounced." At the time, most navies still thought in terms of the clash of battleship fleets.