The Last Mandarin: Nuclear Threats Far from Three Pines

Melissa Gouty
3 minutes ago
5 min read

Novel by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung

The trenches holding the Terra Cotta warriors.

It started when I was young...

It started long, long ago with Little House on the Prairie, the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder about one family's life in prairie towns in the 1870s. Then I absorbed all the Nancy Drew mysteries in the order they were published because I had to make sure I didn't miss anything and that I understood all the people and situations. (To this day, I can't read any series out of order because it just sets my reading world wonky!) From one book to the next, I followed the adventures of these bold characters who allowed me to live vicariously in a world I would never know.

That early exposure in series literature came back in full force in the later years of my adulthood. First, my friend referred me to the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear, about a young woman's life, from her childhood to her work as a nurse during WWI, and then as a female detective through WWII. It's a series filled with great characters, intriguing plots, and historical settings.

My all-time favorite series

But as much as I love Maisie Dobbs, I love Louise Penny's Inspector Armand Gamache and the Three Pines series even more. The characters are rich and complex. The plots are intricate and compelling. There's political rivalry and dirty tricks. Murders, missing people, disguises, and drug addiction intertwine through the novels, beautifully balanced by the warmth, intellect, and love of the main characters who live in Gamache's hometown of Three Pines.

Not only do I long to visit Three Pines, this remote, isolated village with a fabulous Bistro - whose menu items always make me want to eat there - but that pulls me to it with an independent bookstore run by a retired psychiatrist, and the fascinating character of the mad poet, Ruth Zardo, who stomps around town with a foul mouth, profound quotes, and a pet duck who quacks obscenities.

Since I love Louise Penny's work so much, I read her newest stand-alone novel, written with Mellissa Fung, The Last Mandarin.

The Last Mandarin

I already knew that Louise Penny could write detective/mystery stories because her main character, Inspector Gamache, was constantly investigating crimes and uncovering tiny details to solve the puzzle in stories that always moved me.

But I didn't know if any book outside the world of Gamache and Three Pines would work.

Believe me. The Last Mandarin had me hooked from the beginning!

The book focuses on Alice Li, an American of Chinese descent who is a humble food blogger. She has a distant, cold relationship with her mother, Vivien Li, a former Chinese dissident who marched for democracy at Tiananmen Square and has now become a well-known, respected advocate for human rights and a free and democratic China. Alice has a new romantic interest in a fellow food blogger who sends her an encoded text before his death.

A few days later, when alarms go off everywhere in the world, everyone thinks China is the culprit. In a truly terrifying global incident which I won't describe for you because you might want to read the book, hundreds of thousands of deaths occur. Again, the fingers of blame are pointed at China.

Vivien Li, an expert on China, is called to the White House. But so is Alice Li, a food blogger. Why? What in the world would Alice mean to a worldwide crisis?

What follows is a fast-paced, wild ride as we discover secrets of Vivien's past and the connections her daughter might have to the global terrorist threat. Global leaders coalesce, and tempers flare.

All the while, Alice suspects that China is not the real threat.

Location. Location. Location.

From the White House, Vivien and Alice search for clues in the United States before they leave the country and begin investigating events in Hong Kong, many of them in food stalls and noodle shops. They end up in cultural havens and secretive places, like the underground burial trenches of the Terra Cotta Warriors and the hidden hallows of the First Emperor's tomb surrounded by a river of toxic mercury.

Interest piqued, yet?

One of the appeals of The Last Mandarin is the world of high-stakes global politics that we get a glimpse into, a world the vast majority of us will never see. The plot line is both thrilling and frightening. Imagining what could happen if one nation perpetrated these kinds of attacks on other countries sends chills up your spine. (In my brain, I say, "oh, these scenarios are highly unlikely! I'm reading fiction, after all. And yet...the seed of doubt has been planted, and a niggle of worry invades my mind and contaminates my psyche!)

Critical Reception & Blurbs:

The Last Mandarin is a New York Times, USA Today, and Globe and Mail bestseller, and recently reached the #1 Hardcover Fiction spot at McNally Robinson, Canada’s largest independent bookstore chain.

“The tight plotting, recognizable world and complex character relationships make this thriller chillingly relevant and wholly engrossing.” - BookPage

"While the strained relationship between Vivien and her daughter Alice forms the emotional core of the book, readers will be captivated by the race-against-time structure of the story... A treat for Penny’s fans, and a solid political thriller in its own right." - BookList

"A pageturning plunge into geopolitical intrigue and cutting-edge technology." - Wall Street Journal

“Make no mistake about it, The Last Mandarin is a proper political thriller with all the tension, machinations, and intrigue genre devotees demand, but it’s also—at its core—an intimate story of a mother and daughter navigating the challenging dynamics such a relationship develops over time.” - Bolo Books

Mellissa Fung

While I was familiar with Louise Penny's work, I did not know Mellissa Fung. Here's what I learned from the Pulitzer Center:

Award-winning journalist Mellissa Fung has been with CBC Television since 2000. As a national correspondent, she has been on the frontlines of a wide range of stories on both Canadian and world affairs, including the Beijing Olympics and the war in Afghanistan, as well as in-depth documentaries on topics as diverse as asbestos mining and post-traumatic stress in soldiers returning from war. Her bestselling book, Under an Afghan Sky, chronicles her experience as a hostage after she was kidnapped by insurgents in Afghanistan in 2008. Fung divides her time between Toronto and Washington, DC.

I will definitely be on the lookout for the next works by either or both!

Melissa Gouty had the great good fortune of being a member of a Fulbright-Hays Study Abroad Program with 12 other college teachers in 1994. The group traveled to Xian to see the 1974 discovery of the underground trenches housing the warriors. An estimated 8000 warriors guard the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, standing outside of a river of mercury that has kept the Emperor's tomb from being raided over the centuries. The first time she saw the Terra Cotta Warriors, she cried, overcome with the magnitude of the project and the beauty of the figures.

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