paul_cornelius's review
4.0
It is becoming less and less of a surprise to discover that yet another of Edward Aarons' Assignment series is a much better than average book. This one, Assignment Burma Girl, is I think the first of the what are immediately recognizable as four stories set in Southeast Asia, including Assignment White Rajah and Assignment Bangkok, both of which I had read prior to Burma Girl. I'm yet to read Assignment Sumatra, and maybe there are some others whose title might not give their region away. At any rate, Aarons' Southeast Asia is a fairly authentic seeming place. His sense of atmosphere is supberb. It melds right into his action. But there is something extra for readers of Burma Girl. And that is the psychological depth Aarons gives himself over to in this novel. Not just of the CIA hero, Durrell, but the Hartford's, Eva and Paul, and the dislocated expats, Si and Merri. Then, too, the large exploration of just what it takes to drive a man to psychopathy and treason with the study of Col. Mong, aka Emmett Claye. As it happens there is always a lure to go back to Aarons' Durrell novels--at least so far.
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