Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia [Hardcover]

Bertil Lintner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2003

From pirates singing Ricky Martin to mob hits carried out with samurai swords, Bertil Lintner offers a fascinating look at organized crime in the Asia Pacific. Both Western and Asian pundits assert that shady deals are an Asian way of life. Some argue that corruption and illicit business ventures--gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, gun running, oil smuggling--are entrenched parts of the Asian value system. Yet many Asian leaders maintain that their cities are safer than Sydney, Amsterdam, New York, and Los Angeles. Making use of expertise gained from twenty years of living in Asia, Lintner exposes the role crime plays in the countries of the Far East. In Blood Brothers, he takes you inside the criminal fraternities of Asia, examining these networks and their past histories in order to answer one question: How are civil societies all over the world to be protected from the worst excesses of increasingly globalized mobsters?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a useful guide that looks beneath the surface..."--Economist

About the Author

Bertil Lintner is the Burma and Laos correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He has written articles for Asian, American, and European periodicals. He is author of several books on Burma. He currently lives in Thailand.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (March 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403961549
• ISBN-13: 978-1403961549
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #467,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous, November 21, 2003

By 

Daniel Jeffries "buddha379" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia (Hardcover)

This book is simply tremendous. It provides a rare glimpse of a magnificent lost world, one I never imagined existed. It lifts the slimy rock of civilization and shows you the teeming throngs underneath. Enter 1930's Shanghai, a city with three governments, French, British and Chinese, each with their own laws, so that someone could rob a man in one part of the city, flee down the street and escape prosecution. It was a place where the chief of police was also China's most notorious gangster. Enter a world of secret societies, pimps, hustlers, hookers in high collared silk gowns split up to their thighs, gangsters who traced their origins to the Shoalin temples, gamblers, ravenous opium smokers, pirates and every other form of low life. Relive a time where a government fought two wars to force another country to do drugs, rather than ban them. All in all a fabulously researched, well written book that paints a vivid picture of bawdy times you didn't read about in history class. Maybe if they had taught this in history, it would have been a heck of a lot more fun.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Big Ears Du, Pockmarked Huang & Brokentooth Kwoi, June 30, 2005

By 

Chimonsho (Turtle Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia (Hardcover)

Bertil Lintner belongs to a long, fruitful tradition of Anglo-American journalism on Asia. Here he collects a huge amount of historical and current data on large-scale organized crime in East and Southeast Asia; drugs, prostitution, gambling, labor rackets, extortion, "protection," kidnapping, piracy and smuggling are all covered. He defines this difficult, even dangerous subject broadly, including Russia and activities of Asian gangsters in Australia and the USA, with plentiful background on the region to provide context. Lintner discusses infamous secret societies and gangs such as the South China Triads, Japan's yakuza and the Qing Bang (Green Gang) of old Shanghai; their ties to law enforcement and governments; and roles in variously thwarting or promoting political change. It is a pleasure to read an exciting work on an exciting topic, but there are some flaws. Lintner uses interviews and published sources well, but seems to have done little archival research. Some fine, better-documented works cover aspects of the topic: on Java, R. Cribb, "Gangsters & Revolutionaries;" B. Martin, "The Shanghai Green Gang;" and Pan Ling, "Old Shanghai," by a native of the city. Maps would greatly aid in understanding a vast geographical area, and illustrations are sorely missed (wouldn't you like to see how Huang, Du and Kwoi got their names?) Finally, Lintner's grim, brutal tales may induce creeping paranoia and depression among readers. "Blood Brothers" is hardly uplifting but still very worthwhile.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Survey of Roots of Asian Crime & Its Political Ties, July 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia (Hardcover)

Lintner does a good job of providing the reader with a basic understanding of the roots behind many of the predominant crime syndicates found in Asia today. The chapters are basically separated by country, although there are cross-references throughout the book. "Blood Brothers" does not cover all of the countries in Asia, and the biggest emphasis is on the Chinese "Triads" and their derivative influences across the globe. Although the text gets kind of slow sometimes with the abundance of naming and terminology used, this book should be a great resource for anyone interested in studying crime in Asia. Overall, the book is a very valuable and well-written study of the Asian underworld and its implications for global governing and U.S. foreign policy.