The Concubine

When Irishman Mick McCreary is offered a job drilling oil on an Indonesian island, he discovers that the beautiful Lisette is not the last of the dangers he has to face. Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish. When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island-no questions asked-he thinks that luck is running with him once more. But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within twenty-four hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions. 'West is a skillful storyteller who knows how to build suspense into every twist of the plot.' The Christian Science Monitor McCreary, an expert oil-driller convinced of his Irish good luck, with nothing to lose, accepts working for an ambitious and ruthless oil-trader. Power struggles on a ship, forbidden love, illegal business and friendship in limit situations appear throughout the book that takes place in a remote island of Indonesia, where the law is the struggle for survival and natural catastrophes are a threat. Morris West creates a main character that is a brave man, eager for adventure, but also for justice, and that will bring out his heroic side, but also the villain inside of him. Interesting focus of a personality and well illustrated descriptions of an exotic island and a native village. -- Mike McCleary is an out of work oilman in Djakarta, about to be forced out because of some trouble he was in. But then a very rich man offers to help him. Mr. Rubensohn has a surveyor’s map showing strong possibility of an oil strike on an island, and he will pay McCleary to bring in an oil well. Rubensohn also has another prize that McCleary wants, the girl named Lisette; a beautiful Eurasian girl Rubensohn had purchased from the Peacock Pavilion in Saigon. She was a prostitute, but McCleary wanted her, even if it meant killing Rubensohn for her.