They say you should never judge a book by its cover. They were right. The cover of this book, the back in any case, tempts the reader by comparing Year of the Ox to George Orwell's disturbing masterpiece Nineteen Eighty Four.
Poppycock.
In this 'thriller', we are presented with Hong Kong's worst-case scenario. Madame Zhang Ye Gong is China's tough new leader who secretly plans to tear up the Joint Declaration and Basic Law and whip Hong Kong into shape 100 days after July 1, 1997.
Cut to a bunch of expats, and a couple of locals for good measure, whose lives revolve around construction of the Prince of Wales Bridge, cunningly similar to Hong Kong's actual Tsing Ma Bridge on which the author worked during one of his two periods in Hong Kong.
We follow each of them through their own crises: opium addiction; an amputated leg; a murder trial; an execution. All typical run-of-the-mill stuff for bridge workers, of course, and presumably building up our affection for them for when Big Brother, or in this case Big Zhang, has had enough of just watching.
Unfortunately, when she has, I found I didn't care. The characters are so shallow that I didn't feel I knew Derek Green, who left his wife for a girlie-bar girl; I didn't know Tom O'Connell, who got into a spot of bother with the triads. I wouldn't have known what Hong Kong was like either if I didn't live here.
Some story lines held a glimmer of hope but most faded and died, mainly due to inane dialogue.