Macarthur Must Die: A Novel - Hardcover

Slater, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556113838 ISBN 13: 9781556113833

Publisher: Donald I. Fine, 1994

Synopsis

When President Roosevelt orders General MacArthur to Australia, the Japanese launch a plot to assassinate the general, thus preventing him from returning to the Philippines. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

A plodding, what-if potboiler from the Aussie-born Slater (Air Glow Red, 1981, etc.). With General MacArthur's forces breaking through Japan's defensive perimeter in WW II's Pacific theater during the fall of 1942, Tokyo's militarists conclude that assassination is the only way to halt the island-hopping campaign that threatens their homeland. How one of Dai Nihon's more fanatical sons tries and fails to dispatch the American Caesar in his down-under base of operations provides the main action here. Imperial headquarters recruits Tomokazu Somura, an erstwhile student at Toowoomba's technical college, for what he soon realizes could prove a one-way mission. In April 1943, the designated killer flies an ordnance- laden Wildcat (captured intact in the Philippines) from the deck of a submarine to Brisbane, where by the dawn's early light he bombs and strafes, without result, the hotel in which MacArthur lives with his family. Though shot down, the determined Somura survives a bailout over bush country from whence he makes his murderous way to the home of Elizabeth Lawson, a former classmate who still pines for him despite the fact their two nations are at war. Somura cons his lost love into driving him to Queensland's capital, where, unbeknownst to her, he intends not to surrender but to complete his homicidal mission. The adoring Elizabeth eventually wises up, albeit not in time to prevent a high-noon shootout in downtown Brisbane, which produces a denouement straight out of Higgins's The Eagle Has Landed. As a native of his narrative's Australian setting, Slater is able to offer some flashes of local color, but he never quite manages to get or keep his fanciful plot off the ground. (First printing of 50,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Apparently trying for something like "The Eye of the Jackal Has Landed," Slater ( Firespill ) has cooked up a goulash that goes down pretty easily even though the good guys' final ruse lacks spice. In order to save Axis holdings in the southwest Pacific, Japanese war minister Tojo is determined to kill General Douglas MacArthur, who is in Brisbane, Australia, plotting a counter-offensive against Japan. Having spent a year in Brisbane as an exchange student, young Tomokazu Somura is given the assignment: to pilot a U.S. Navy Wildcat launched from a Japanese I-boat submarine and drop a bomb on MacArthur's headquarters. After losing his plane in the initial unsuccessful bombing attempt, Somura heads to Brisbane and MacArthur, using his onetime Australian girlfriend as dupe and eventual hostage. The fight between an Australian destroyer escort and the Japanese sub is the best part of the book: the action is tautly detailed, and the good guys win. Otherwise, the love interest is pretty sappy, the characters are not deeply delineated and the writing ranges from serviceable to clunky. Readers will recognize the "old Japanese proverb . . . 'Once bitten, twice shy.' " 50,000 first printing.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Donald I. Fine
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1556113838
• ISBN 13: 9781556113833
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304