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No Hero (1935)

por John P. Marquand

Otros autores: Ver la sección otros autores.

Series: Mr. Moto (1)

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1189229,701 (3.61)3
The thrilling 1st installment in Pulitzer Prize-winning author John P. Marquand's classic espionage series featuring Imperial Japan's most skillful spy Capitalizing on his heroic career as a World War I flying ace, Casey Lee agrees to pilot a plane across the Pacific as a publicity stunt for an American tobacco company. But his future as a goodwill ambassador between East and West takes a nosedive when the flight is abruptly canceled. Stranded in Tokyo, his bank account rapidly dwindling, Casey is approached by Mr. Moto, a secret agent with a job to offer. The work entails a matter of grave international importance--and it pays well.   Casey accepts the proposition and boards a steamship bound for Shanghai, where his mission will begin. His fellow passengers include Mr. Moto and Sonya, a beautiful exile from White Russia with her own private agenda. When a Chinese man turns up dead in Casey's stateroom, the trio is caught up in a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit, the outcome of which might just determine the fate of their nations.   First serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, John P. Marquand's popular and acclaimed Mr. Moto Novels were the inspiration for 8 films starring Peter Lorre.  … (más)
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This is the first book in the short Mr. Moto series, written in the 1930s.

WWI flying ace and hero, Casey Lee, now a free-lance flyer, finds himself in Japan. He’s been hired by a tobacco company to fly across the Pacific as an advertising stunt. When the flight is cancelled and the company states it will pay his way home by ship. His heavy drinking has taken its toll and this is the latest slam to his deteriorating reputation.

As a result of this current bout, he makes the acquaintance of a Mr. Moto and the beautiful blond White Russian refugee Sonya Karaloff. He immediately falls for Karaloff and is fascinated by Mr. Moto. Moto is an agent of Japan and Karaloff works with Moto…but Casey is unaware of that. . Between these two people, Casey Lee finds himself in a web of intrigue, espionage, danger, romance and a dab of humour.

The Japanese expansionist era is the setting for the story. This was the period before WWII and Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It is interesting to note the difference of Mr. Moto’s character in the book and the movies. Being more familiar with the movies, I noticed this. Yet I still enjoyed the read. ( )
  ChazziFrazz | Jan 10, 2023 |
review of
John P. Marquand's Your Turn, Mr. Moto
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 27, 2018



Almost 5 yrs ago now, I made a movie called "CHAN(geling)" ( https://youtu.be/XMP8mU1OfSY ) that was meant "basically as a critique of yellowface as a symptom of anti-Asian sentiment in Hollywood in the beginning of the 20th century" (to quote from the YouTube notes). Making this movie involved rewatching (& picking scenes from) a slew of Charlie Chan movies, mostly ones starring Warner Oland. As a side-effect of this, I checked out the Mr. Moto movies too:

"Think Fast, Mr. Moto" (1937)
"Thank You, Mr. Moto" (1937)
"Mr. Moto's Gamble" (1938)
"Mr. Moto Takes a Chance" (1938)
"Mysterious Mr. Moto" (1938)
"Mr. Moto's Last Warning" (1939)
"Mr. Moto in Danger Island" (1939)
"Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation" (1939)

All of these starred Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto. Lorre played maniacs & gangsters more often than not but I vaguely remember his Mr. Moto being portrayed sympathetically. The last of the Mr. Moto movies starring Lorre was in 1939. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Hence, it's no wonder that there weren't any more Mr. Moto movies until one last one called "The Return of Mr. Moto" (1965). In it, Henry Silva starring instead of Lorre, Moto is living in Hawaii & pitted against an ex-nazi. This sort of thing fascinates me given that the Mr. Moto movies wd've been Hollywood attempts to portray a Japanese character as intelligent & decent — but used an actor associated w/ maniac & killer roles — maybe Hollywood was hedging its bets. All this happened before Japanese Americans became 'suspects' as enemies of the US after Pearl Harbor.

"The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans in the mainland U.S., who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps. However, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were also interned. The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans. Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with "one drop of Japanese blood" were placed in internment camps.

"Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This authority was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the West Coast, including all of California and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, except for those in government camps. Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942, while some 5,500 community leaders had been arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack and thus were already in custody. The majority of nearly 130,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S. mainland were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

SO, in the spirit of continuing research into the popular perception of Asians, in general, & Japanese, in particular, in this era, I decided to read a Mr. Moto novel. This one, Your Turn, Mr. Moto, was the 1st (1935). The bks must've been fairly popular to be turned into movies so quickly. Given the publication date, it's interesting that Marquand has his American character say that:

"the Japanese are capable people, sensitive and intelligent. Still, although it sometimes seems incredible that our two nations should ever go to war, there is always the thought of war behind the scenes in every nation." - p 7

It's as if Marquand is anticipating war & arguing against it.

The main character, "Casey" Lee, is a decorated American war hero pilot in Japan on business. His career as a glamorous pilot is on the skids & he's become an alcoholic. He gives a press conference.

"["]I'm going to be a goodwill ambassador between Japan and the United States. But I don't care so long as I have a crate to fly. The good old American game of nonsense doesn't bother me."

""You needn't yell about it so," a voice objected. "You're an American, aren't you?"

""That is where I was born," I answered, "but I'm broadminded enough to have my own ideas. I've fought for the Spaniards and the Poles. There are other nations besides the United States—in case you don't know—several others."

""All right, Lee," said someone, "but here you are in a public place. Keep your voice down. A lot of these Japanese are looking at you."

""Let 'em look," I said. "Why should I care if they look? And I'll say anything I damn well please any time at all."" - pp 12-13

Lee goes drunkenely off the deep end, damaging his public image, & is helped back to his room by Mr. Moto, a Japanese detective or espionage expert, who Lee doesn't know. The next day, his advertising flight is cancelled. Soon thereafter, he meets a Russian woman, a spy, named Sonya. I often think of WWII as starting w/ the Japanese invasion of Manchuria — rather than w/ the slightly later nazi invasions. Lee talks w/ Sonya sympathetically about the Japanese there:

""Well, no one objected when your Tsar controlled Manchuria; why should we object when Japan does? It's against the laws of fact to keep eighty million Japanese on a few small islands. If Japan is strong enough to run it, why shouldn't she run Manchuria?"" - p 37

It doesn't take him long to have suspicions about Sonya's motives. Nonetheless, he's strongly attracted to her:

"I did not answer. Whether it was true or not, I was pleased that she liked me, but I still had sense enough to know what she was by then. The ring had told me. It revealed, among other things, that I had never asked her to lunch and that she was a Japanese spy. Not that the idea shocked me. Instead it pleased me. She was a Japanese spy and I was no one—footloose and entirely on my own, being speeded through Tokio in a limousine." - p 41

Lee's sensitivity to Japan's international position continues to be spelled out. Keep in mind that the bk was written a decade before the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

"I could understand Japan's sesnitiveness to any enemy threat from the air. A sight of those unpainted matchboxes of dwellings, with hardly air space between them—and our motor moved through street after street—explained why Japan watched with unconcealed misgivings the contruction of our airplane carriers and the development of Chinese and Russian aviation. A few incendiary bombs were all that would be needed to bring about unimaginable disaster" - pp 43-44

""Think of it this way," she said; "think of a great country which is always moving forward—taking. The United States is moving toward Asia— her hand has reached out over Hawaii, over Guam, over the Philippines. Where is she going to stop?"" - p 51

""He looks to the east and seems to see the gray wall of the American battle fleet. He looks to the west and seems to see the Russian army and the Russian air force. And China. Mongolia is full of agents["]" - p 53

Lee gets sucked into working for Mr. Moto, who's well-mannered but not completely a sympathetic character b/c there's ruthlessness in his profession. While involved, Lee realizes that he still holds loyalty to the US, regardless of his conflicting feelings:

"Men died for their faith who have never been inside a church, and men die for their country, although they may have spent their lives criticizing all its works. The amazing thing about it is that they are probably surprised by their irrational willingness to die." - p 66

Are we then just insects in a hive?

Trapped onboard a ship, Lee finds himself at Mr. Moto's mercy:

""I am so sorry," Mr. Moto said again, "but you must submit to have them search you. Please."

"A single glance at the stewarts and at Mr. Moto convinced me that any further argument was useless, for the men all had an air of complete efficiency written on them which displayed a familiarity with forms of business not usually practiced by steamship employees." - p 118

Lee arrives in China:

"Whenever my mind brings back their faces and rags, an impression of China comes with them which has never been erased. Paradoxically, perhaps, in spite of their stark poverty and evidences of disease and grinding labor, that impression has always been one of peace. It was a peace born of a knowledge of life and of human relationships. I could understand why China had absorbed her conquerors when I watched that ring of faces. Their bland impatience was impervious to any fortune." - p 140

Nonetheless, 14 yrs after this novel was published, the Chinese Communist Revolution started on October 1, 1949. Perhaps that "grinding labor" was a bit too much after all. Did it get better after the revolution? One hopes so.

"I doubt if any city in the world is more amazing than Shanghai, where the culture of the East and West has met to turn curiously into something different than East and West; where the silver and riches of China are hoarded for safety; where opéra-bouffe Oriental millionaires drive their limousines along the Bund; where the interests of Europe meet the Orient and clash in a sparkle of uniforms and jewels; where the practical realities of Western industrialism meet the fatality of the East." - p 162

All in all, I didn't find the writing in Your Turn, Mr. Moto anything to write home about but as an American writer's take on Asia in the 1930s I found it well worth reading. ( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
Loved this.

****spoiler***

Would have been a 5, but towards the end got a little long in the descriptions of where they'd be flying, the Chinese countryside, etc...just lost me the littlest bit there at the end. Still an all timer though. ( )
  BooksForDinner | Sep 26, 2020 |
K.C. Lee, or Casey, as he is called, is the protagonist of the first Mr. Moto book, No Hero. Mr. Moto himself is a Japanese enemy agent, albeit someone of honor, wisdom but murderous efficiency, too.

Set in the early 1930s, No Hero perfectly captures the mood of the times. The rising power of Japan, the naval arms race in the Pacific, and the dismemberment of China all play thematically in Marquand's look at the Orient. And it should be the "Orient," here, not "Asia." Culturally, the Orient of the 1930s signified unknowable peoples and cultures, alien values, and a decadent disregard for life. Race is an acknowledged ideal of the book. No Hero plays up to these motifs and ideals but incorporates them into a convincing "hardboiled" detective story. It should be pointed out that Casey is no detective, not even a spy as are all the other main characters in this novel, but an aviator down on his luck, an adventurer looking for someone to finance his next journey. It is this that entraps him into the ring of spies he must deal with.

And there is a love interest, an effective femme fatale, Sonya. All plays out in the expected fashion of the genre. But it does so against the grand sweep of the Orient--Tokyo, Yokohama, Shanghai, and the Chinese interior. The setting of 1930s Shanghai has now become iconic. But when Marquand was writing this novel, he was one of those helping to establish and define the iconography of the "Mysterious East." ( )
  PaulCornelius | Apr 12, 2020 |
While I was searching for Charlie Chan, I discovered a cache of Mr. Moto books on the Canadian Gutenberg site (Charlie Chan comes from the Australian Gutenberg site). Anyway, I had some vague recollections of, or references to anyway, Mr. Moto from my childhood and thought perhaps he was similar to Charlie Chan, albeit Japanese instead of Chinese American. Nope, Charlie is an American police detective, albeit of Chinese extraction. Mr. Moto, on the other hand is a Japanese spy working for the glory of Imperial Japan in the 1930s.

The protagonist of this book is actually not Mr. Moto, but an American aviator, K. C. Lee. He is in Tokyo, expecting to fly across the Pacific in a publicity stunt arranged to advertise a tobacco company. But the flight falls through, and K.C., who has become rather a disreputable drunk, whines and complains and blames his troubles on his home country, i.e. America. Mr. Moto happens to overhear him and thinks perhaps he can get K.C. to help him find some secret naval plans that have gone missing. He, Mr. Moto, gets a beautiful white Russian ex-pat who grew up in Northern China to vamp K.C. and see if he might be recruited to help find the missing plans. Needless there's lots of skullduggery and attempts to kill K.C. and others and it all ends "adequately" for all sides.

While Mr. Moto is a spy, he is a polite one. He doesn't hold any animosity toward the people he's working against. It's almost like the old-fashioned view of sports from the Victorian era, you fight like hell for the victory, then go off at the end to have tea together, the best of friends, hoping for another "good show" another day. Or something like that. I'm vaguely undecided whether I'll read the next Mr. Moto or not, but likely I well. The story is well plotted and well written. ( )
  lgpiper | Jun 21, 2019 |
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» Añade otros autores (3 posibles)

Nombre del autorRolTipo de autor¿Obra?Estado
John P. Marquandautor principaltodas las edicionescalculado
Lenclud, JacquelineTraductorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado

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Commander James Driscoll, attached to the Intelligence branch of the United States Navy, has asked me to write this, in order that my own version may be placed in the files with his own account of certain peculiar transactions which took place in Japan and China some months ago.
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The original title of Your Turn, Mr. Moto was No Hero
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The thrilling 1st installment in Pulitzer Prize-winning author John P. Marquand's classic espionage series featuring Imperial Japan's most skillful spy Capitalizing on his heroic career as a World War I flying ace, Casey Lee agrees to pilot a plane across the Pacific as a publicity stunt for an American tobacco company. But his future as a goodwill ambassador between East and West takes a nosedive when the flight is abruptly canceled. Stranded in Tokyo, his bank account rapidly dwindling, Casey is approached by Mr. Moto, a secret agent with a job to offer. The work entails a matter of grave international importance--and it pays well.   Casey accepts the proposition and boards a steamship bound for Shanghai, where his mission will begin. His fellow passengers include Mr. Moto and Sonya, a beautiful exile from White Russia with her own private agenda. When a Chinese man turns up dead in Casey's stateroom, the trio is caught up in a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit, the outcome of which might just determine the fate of their nations.   First serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, John P. Marquand's popular and acclaimed Mr. Moto Novels were the inspiration for 8 films starring Peter Lorre.  

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