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"Mr. Benson makes a case that he is the heir to Mr. Fleming"

On a flight from Tokyo to England, passenger Kyoko McMahon becomes violently ill before dying. At about the same time near Tokyo, Kyoto's parents and her older sister also die. In England, the coroner believes that Kyoko died from a strand of West Nile disease, but only ten times deadlier than the normal strain.

James Bond attends the G8 summit in Japan to provide added protection to his country's leadership. He also investigates the deaths of the McMahon family, as the patriarch was a Scottish citizen and the CEO of a powerful pharmaceutical firm. Bond prefers not to return to Japan as he has bad memories though he appreciates the grace and beauty of the women. He soon works with his old friend Tiger Tanaka and agent Reiko Tamura in a race against a doomsday clock. Japanese Mafia Yami Shogun Goro Yoshida plots an end to western domination especially kicking America off his beloved nation's soil through a strand of virus that makes the deaths of the McMahon seem slow and gentle.

THE MAN WITH THE RED TATTOO is the best of the neo-Bond light tales. Raymond Benson returns Bond to what makes the character interesting to readers, yet humanizes 007 with his bad memories of Japan. The story line is quite exciting with global implications yet simplistic. The support cast is fun especially the return of Tiger and the villain who seems a lot like Bin Laden, as he wants the American presence off his beloved island nation. Mr. Benson makes a case that he is the heir to Mr. Fleming.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted May 10, 2002

On a quiet late-night flight from Tokyo to London, a beautiful young woman, Kioko McMahon, falls ill. Before the plane can reach emergency medical facilities across the Pacific, she succumbs to her inexplicable symptoms. The mystery deepens when police in Japan discover that her family shared her fate. The only survivor is her rebellious sister, Mayumi, who had run off with her gang-member boyfriend several years before.

Because the late patriarch of the family, Peter McMahon, was the head of one of the world's most important genetic research companies, and a personal friend of the Prime Minister, James Bond is sent to investigate the deaths. 007's quest for answers leads to the surviving sister and to a nest of Yakuza gangsters. Along the way, he uncovers a plot of such monstrous proportions that it could only have been hatched in the mind of a madman.