"A contemporary Washington mystery with a high tech, China twist...A brilliantly-conceived spy novel introducing seven engaging characters whose lives are transformed by crisis. It begins as a drinking club in an academic backwater on the Stanford University campus of the late 1970s. A post-Nixon/post-Mao generation of China scholars plots to make a better world. Suddenly, the U.S. recognizes the People's Republic of China. Intense demand arises for the unique skills The Mandarin Club members possess. Now, yesterday's dreamers are today's policy-makers and pundits, patriots and spies. Their intimately intertwined past thrusts them together into an international crisis straight from tomorrow's headlines, as America, China, and Taiwan stumble toward war. Told sequentially from the perspective of each of the Stanford originals, the fast-paced tale takes us behind the scenes of rogue intelligence operations and high tech smuggling, from Washington and Beijing to the wild coastal towns of California."