Solve a 5 year + book search?

October 31, 2007 8:45 AM

Booksearch: Content: Bob Newton / Death / Rajput Regiment / Hong Kong c1941 / Tonga Trench. Fiction, c1986(pre), Purportedly well known author & well reviewed book. What was it? Ring any bells?

Do it again for me, hivemind:

"In 1986 I was living in Tonga, in the South Pacific (having earlier on lived in The Solomon Islands not so far away). Whilst on leave in Australia I found a book (a fictional thriller, published in the UK I believe) which was based in and around Tonga. It had a good write-up and had been recently published by a reasonably well-known author, so I thought it would be a good read and appropriate for my current circumstances.

I couldn't put it down! However, when I was two-thirds of the way through I was gobsmacked to discover that my uncle was mentioned in this work of fiction! There was no question of being mistaken over this. His name was printed correctly and the circumstances of his death in Hong Kong at the hands of the Japanese was chronicled accurately. I just couldn't believe what I was reading.

Since the book was featuring Tonga, and the second deepest sea in the world, The Tonga Trench, I thought it would be of interest to some Tongan people locally. The first person I lent it to (and the last as it happens) was a member of the Tongan Royal Family, with a polite request to please return it to me when she had finished reading it. As you will guess from the title of this thread, that was the last I saw of my book. :cry: In recent years I have written to that particular HRH (on two occasions) to ask if she has finished with it and could possibly return it to me - naturally no reply has been received.

Over the past ten years I have tried to find this book again, in spite of being hampered by not now remembering either the title of the book, or the author. [-X Initially I wanted to try to find it again so that my father and his brother could read this account of their deceased sibling. They too have both passed away now, but there are other family members who would be interested to read this book, especially the dead uncle's nephew who was named after him - Robert Newton. His and my uncle was Captain Robert (Bob) Newton of the 5th Battalion 7th Rajput Regiment. This battalion was all but wiped out when they were engaged in battle with the Japanese when they invaded Hong Kong. My uncle died on 19th December 1941, fighting to the end, even after having been wounded. He was Mentioned in Dispatches but my grandmother did not get to hear about his courageous actions until five years later after the Commanding Officer had been released from his Japanese POW Camp and was then able to write to her. For the remaining 45 years of her life, my Grandmother never again managed to celebrate Christmas, since the one of 1941 had been such a desperately sad one for her.

I have done all I can to try to find this book again. I have had a letter to this effect published in the main Tongan newspaper. I have been in touch with Tony Banham, the author of several books about the forgotten war in Hong Kong; I have been in touch with the Secretary of the Rajput Regimental Association (although I think that there are only about five members left alive today). I have searched library catalogues and searched the internet ad-nauseam. I have emailed second-hand bookshops world-wide and clicked on so many contact-us tabs that I have forgotten how many hundreds by now. I have been in touch with the bookshops in Tonga and communicated with the New Zealand High Commission there too. Also the Tongan High Commission in London! Not a soul in Tonga has any idea what this book might be. I even joined a Tongan website Forum chat-room, very similar to this, in the hope that someone there would know what I was talking about. Not a single soul in Tonga had ever, it seemed, so much as heard of a book - thriller - fiction - mentioning The Tonga Trench and with a strange addition of having brought in the dying moments in Hong Kong of a real living soldier.

Although my search has been going on along these lines for a decade, and certainly most actively since I had use of a computer, I am no nearer to knowing what the name of my missing book might be, much less the author.

If anyone with some spare time on their hands, and a seriously good command of the use of the Internet, felt like helping me find this book - the relief at once more being able to buy it again through eBay or Amazon would be lifting a great weight from my shoulders. I feel I owe it to my family to find this book again so that we all have a memento of a young man who gave his life for his country at the age of 24 - thus being deprived of knowing the next generation of Newtons and living his own life to the full. He is buried in Hong Kong and I am glad that I have been able to visit his grave three times. His elderly father made it to that Hong Kong graveside too, working his passage there on a merchant vessel at the age of 80!!

The books which I have ruled out as not being 'it' are:

"Tales of the Tikongs" , "Rascals in Paradise", "The Trulove" (O'Brian), "Peking Incident" (Atcheson), "Lighter Than A Feather" (Westheimer), "Shanghai" (Marshall) or "The Admiral" (Dibner.)

Any bookworms out there who may have read and recognise the book I'm looking for?"

The lady's been looking for *years* for the answer to her question - and my google-fu just ain't cutting it here I'm afraid - anyone ever read such a book and recall what it was called?

posted by DrtyBlvd to grab bag (8 comments total)

I have no idea, but for future reference that's an awful lot of information (much of it unnecessary) for people to read through - it might help being more succinct.
posted by Dasein at 9:10 AM on October 31, 2007

Total guess - The Fall of Hong Kong by Tim Carew.
posted by iconomy at 9:21 AM on October 31, 2007

It would definitely help to know what this book is actually about. Since her relative didn't show up in the story until she was two-thirds of the way through reading it, the book is obviously not about him. She gives no information as to the content, other than

1. details about about her uncle (which is a minor plot detail and may not show up in online mentions)
2. the fact that the book is based in and around Tonga

She says Content: Bob Newton / Death / Rajput Regiment / Hong Kong c1941 / Tonga Trench. but this doesn't give any clues as to what the book is about, or am I reading this wrong, and the whole book about Bob Newtown and the Rajput Regiment?

What else ya got?
posted by iconomy at 10:51 AM on October 31, 2007

You should try these guys. They've worked wonders in the past . Good luck to you!
posted by machinecraig at 1:26 PM on October 31, 2007

Another suggestion - find an author who has written fiction in a similar setting and write to them with your query.
posted by machinecraig at 1:35 PM on October 31, 2007

iconomy - I know, I know - almost nothing to go on...

Unfortunately, they don't remember any other detail(!) I would, and I'm sure others would, but she don't *shrug*

Dasein - True, but I felt it gave a little background that people might have been interested in! Thank you for reading anyway :)

machinecraig *Booksleuth* - now that looks linteresting! Thanks for the suggestion, will give it a shot. Re. the alternate author - great idea, thanks - again, will try that angle as well.
posted by DrtyBlvd at 1:11 AM on November 1, 2007

I have the sneaking suspicion that she's misremembering something about the book, or that she's confusing two different books. When you Google bob newton book tonga, you get so many hits of various places online where she's already asked this question, and it's hard to believe that she read a somewhat popular novel written by a somewhat popular author, and no one's ever heard of it. The fact that she can't remember what it's about is also strange. I went to books.google.com and keyed in bob newton and robert newtown and rajput and battalion and tonga and tonga trench, yada yada yada and there are no novels with those combinations of words, but there are several non-fiction books. It's also a little unusual that a novel, a work of fiction, would include a historic event such as newton's, using real names and locations (although the author I linked to upthread, Tim Carew, is known for doing that very thing). Anyway what I'm wondering is, could this be non-fiction, or a combination of two books?
posted by iconomy at 7:47 AM on November 1, 2007

iconomy - I'm in complete agreement with you - I struggle with the same things not making much sense... I actually favour the notion that it *is* a historical recountance perhaps told in a first person perspective or somesuch - I can't reconcile how such fact would wind up in fiction. (This sort!:)

I started to get all 'holy grail' about this for a few days last week - but upon reflection, I think it a wiser thing to leave it; put in on the back burner so to speak ;)

Thanks for your comments all, and suggestions!
posted by DrtyBlvd at 5:21 AM on November 5, 2007