The Red Dragon Operation
by Joseph Rosenberger
1987 Critic's Choice
Jonathan Skul and Deborah Miles return, this time with a new crew - three Chinese operatives and a helicopter pilot renowned for having killed hundreds of sex workers in Vietnam. Their mission - disrupt the cooperation between San Francisco Triads and the KGB by killing everyone.
Usual formula, though instead of failed raid, successful raid, being raided, final raid, we get another raid instead of being raided. One highlight is the use of high explosives and vomiting agents, so we get the crew mowing down gangsters as they projectile vomit and crap themselves.
One of the more psychotic of Rosenberger's. His ballistic prose is on fire, with a full paragraph devoted to the anatomical description of a bullet's path from the taint up through the head. More racist than usual, but mostly just referring to people based on foods they might eat. There's a discussion about the ethics of murdering innocent wait staff that hinged on whether they were US born or not. Rosenberger returns to the well of self-loathing Chinese heroes we saw with the Mace series, and we get two this book.
Rosenberger gave as an ounce of character development between one and two of the series, but things stall here with Skul still being a drunk and Skul and Miles still banging and not sure of their feelings, which gives us a Rosenberger sex scene.
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