(The plane is loaded with M-14 automatic rifles but, sorry, that's another story.) They have come to deal with Ian Struan Dunross, 12th tai-pan -''supreme leader'' in Cantonese - of the Noble House, a legendary Hong Kong shipping and trading company with properties around the world. ''Casey'' Tcholok, arrive by private jet in the British colony. An American corporate raider, Linc Bartlett, and his female chief of staff, K. ''Noble House'' takes place in Hong Kong during one week of August 1963. It has so many plot lines -I counted at least 13 plots crisscrossing through the novel - that you can story-hop, like changing TV channels, whenever your interest in one of them wanes. Thus you can concentrate on the dramatic action and tough talk instead of complexities like character and motive. It has 30 or 40 characters -many with interchangeable attitudes, body builds and speech habits. It's aggressively long - some 300,000 words and more than 1200 pages - perhaps so one doesn't have to switch books so often. JAMES CLAVELL'S ''Noble House'' is an extravagantly romantic novel for people who really like to spend time reading novels.
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