Year of the Seahorse. A James Tong Novel - M. Eigh

The name is Tong. James Tong. 008, because eight is prosperity and Bond is a C-minus grade.

James Tong is sixty-three and reads as late forties. He has discarded his English name. He wears $5,000 tracksuits to eat spicy street noodles. He believes - with the unbothered confidence of a man who is his own walking proof - that the daily ingestion of beef tendon and fish maw is the literal mechanism by which his face refuses to age. The mirror agrees with him. He has stopped engaging with the difference.

A Silicon Valley billionaire wants the CRISPR-modified seahorses out of Beijing's Hospital 503. The fee is sixty-six million. James will run it his way: three exfil routes, three identity papers, three women who can plausibly explain why he was in their bedroom at three in the morning. The cunning rabbit keeps three warrens.

Then Misaki Tanaka walks into Bar Ishinohana. Thirty-four. Former B-movie star. A four-character tattoo between her shoulder blades that says I only know enough. James will see it for the first time in Ginza and he will not understand it.

The seahorses leave Beijing on schedule. The general is James's cousin. And then James says the wrong thing on the morning of the eve of eight.

Year of the Seahorse. Book 1 of The 008 Series. For readers of Don Winslow, Daniel Suarez, and Kevin Kwan.

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