Green God, The

Private detective Sam Spade nearly died, several times over, chasing The Maltese Falcon.  But what Spade faced in pursuit of the black bird was child’s play compared to what Lieutenant Bill Mahone of Naval Intelligence endures when he sets out to find the Green God.

He’s tortured with knives, threatened with a slow, painful death, and buried alive.  And then things get really nasty.  The entire Chinese city of Tientsin is under siege from within—the streets filled with rioting, arson, mass looting and murder.  And all because the city’s sacred idol, the Green God, has gone missing. 

Mahone’s convinced he knows who stole the deity of jade, diamonds and pearls.  To retrieve it, though, he’ll have to go undercover and underground.  But he’s walking a razor’s edge—between worship and warfare, between a touch of heaven and a taste of bloody hell.

As a young man, Hubbard visited Manchuria, where his closest friend headed up British intelligence in northern China.  Hubbard gained a unique insight into the intelligence operations and spy-craft in the region as well as the criminal trade in sacred objects.  It was on this experience that he based The Green God, which was his first professional sale, published in February, 1934—the beginning of a very remarkable and prolific writing career.

Also includes the adventure Five Mex for a Million, in which an American Army captain, falsely accused of murder, finds himself taking on the Chinese government, a powerful Russian general, and a mysterious, unexpected passenger.