The Man With the Red Tattoo- Raymond Benson 2002Summary- Bond is sent to Japan to "baby sit" the Prime Minister at the G8 conference being held there. He meets up with his old friend "Tiger" Tanaka, and the mission should be a piece of cake.
Things change, however, when the deaths of a wealthy foreign business man and his family begin to show connections with the yakuza. Now there is only one daughter left. She owns the majority of the company, and is being controlled by the yakuza. Gora Yoshida, "the man with the red tattoo" introduced in Benson's last book, is not only the head of that branch of the yakuza, but he also owns a legitimate company. He wants to obtain CureLab, and plans on getting it by killing off the remaining girl and then merging the companies. He needs their technology because he has a plan to use genetically altered mosquitoes to introduce a fast acting, deadly strain of West Nile Virus in the G8 conference, and then in three major U.S. cities. This will start an epidemic and be a strike at the corrupt West.
Bond finds out about the plan, and with the help of a high tech mosquito neck, saves everyone at the conference. He also catches one of Yoshida's men, a dwarf nicknamed "Kappa". Kappa tells Bond where the carriers are going with the mosquitoes in the U.S.
My Grade- B+ This is really the final chapter of a four novel story arc. The Union wasn't present, but Yoshida was introduced in the last novel. I think that Benson rounded out the story arc well. He leaves the slate clean for an all new story next time.
Best Moment- Bond isn't really an expert at the art of sword fighting. However, when Yoshida shows up in his apartment intent on killing him, Bond holds his own quite well. Just one more skill that Bond can pull out of the seemingly endless well.Back to Novels Page
