Author | Michael Moorcock |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Comedy novel Spy novel |
Publisher | Hutchinson (UK) Macmillan (US) |
Publication date | 1970 |
Media type | Print (hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 185 pp |
The Chinese Agent (1970) is a comic novel by Michael Moorcock. It is a revision of Somewhere in the Night, which Moorcock first published in 1966 under the pseudonym Bill Barclay. Although Moorcock is best known as the author of fantasy fiction and science fiction-based parables such as Behold the Man and The Dancers at the End of Time , here he writes a light-hearted caper that parodies the spy novel genre.
The Chinese Agent was recently reissued in the United Kingdom as Jerry Cornell's Comic Capers. The new edition includes a sequel, The Russian Intelligence (1980).
Arnold Hodgkiss, a jewel thief who has come to London to steal the Crown Jewels, is dreamily casing the Tower of London when a strange man approaches him and says "The crown is large". Hodgkiss, nonplussed, replies "And very heavy", unwittingly giving the correct countersign. The man, a spy, thrusts a parcel at Hodgkiss and disappears. Hodgkiss keeps the parcel, hoping to turn it in some way to his advantage.
Soon afterward, Jerry Cornell receives a new assignment: he is to discover the whereabouts of plans for "Project Glass", which have been stolen. Although the thief has been caught, the plans are still missing, and are believed to be in the hands of a fiendish Chinese agent named Kung Fu Tzu. Meanwhile, Kung is hopping mad because he never actually got the plans; they were given to Hodgkiss by mistake.
The comedy of errors intensifies as Cornell tracks Kung, who in turn follows Hodgkiss, who eludes Kung but finds trouble aplenty when he tries to steal a brooch from a stall on Portobello Road.
Moorcock's comic instincts show through, sometimes darkly, in many of his works; here, he gives them free rein. Nobody dies, either – at least, not permanently.
As the absurd characters frantically chase each other through the heart of London, Moorcock offers both lively comic adventure and a bizarre (but oddly affectionate) look at the city's slum-dwellers. London's Portobello Road, for example, with its hard-bitten costermongers, becomes nothing less than a force of nature: when Hodgkiss, a world-renowned jewel thief, tries to lift a brooch from a Portobello merchant's stall, he is hunted down like a dog. A still better example is Jerry's odious Uncle Edmond, who is so fantastically dirty that the rubbish pile in his yard has congealed and come to life. When two communist operatives try to intimidate him, he sneaks up behind them and pushes them into the quivering pile, escaping while they fight to extricate themselves from its gelatinous embrace.
Michael John Moorcock is an English–American writer, particularly of science fiction and fantasy, who has published a number of well-received literary novels as well as comic thrillers, graphic novels and non-fiction. He has worked as an editor and is also a successful musician. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, which were a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s.
Jerry Cornelius is a fictional character created by English author Michael Moorcock. The character is an urban adventurer and an incarnation of the author's Eternal Champion concept. Cornelius is a hipster of ambiguous and occasionally polymorphous gender. Many of the same characters feature in each of several Cornelius books, though the individual books have little connection with one another, having a more metafictional than causal relationship. The first Jerry Cornelius book, The Final Programme, was made into a 1973 film starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre. Notting Hill in London features prominently in the stories.
The Eternal Champion is a fictional character created by British author Michael Moorcock and is a recurrent feature in many of his speculative fiction works.
Entrapment is a 1999 caper film directed by Jon Amiel and written by Ronald Bass. It stars Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones and includes Will Patton, Ving Rhames and Maury Chaykin. The film focuses on the relationship between investigator Virginia "Gin" Baker and professional thief Robert "Mac" MacDougal as they attempt a heist at the turn of the New Millennium. Simon West and Antoine Fuqua were both in talks to direct before Amiel was hired. The film was released theatrically in the United States on 30 April 1999 and in the United Kingdom on 2 July 1999.
The Cullinan Diamond is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, weighing 3,106 carats (621.20 g), discovered at the Premier No.2 mine in Cullinan, South Africa, on 26 January 1905. It was named after Thomas Cullinan, the owner of the mine. In April 1905, it was put on sale in London, but despite considerable interest, it was still unsold after two years. In 1907, the Transvaal Colony government bought the Cullinan and Prime Minister Louis Botha presented it to Edward VII, the British king who reigned over the territory. It was then cut by Joseph Asscher & Co. in Amsterdam.
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from South to North, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobello Road Market, one of London's notable street markets, known for its second-hand clothes, pastries and antiques. Every August since 1996, the Portobello Film Festival has been held in locations around Portobello Road and, in 2015, Portobello Radio was founded as the area's community radio station.
Blue Streak is a 1999 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Les Mayfield. Inspired by the 1965 film The Big Job, the film stars Martin Lawrence, Luke Wilson, Dave Chappelle, Peter Greene, Nicole Ari Parker and William Forsythe. Lawrence plays Miles, a jewel thief who tries to retrieve a diamond he left at a police station, whereupon he disguises himself as a detective and gets paired with a real policeman to investigate burglaries. The film was shot on location in California. The prime shooting spot was Sony Pictures Studios, which is located in Culver City, California.
The Great Muppet Caper is a 1981 musical heist comedy film directed by Jim Henson and the second theatrical film featuring the Muppets. The film stars Muppet performers Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, and Steve Whitmire, as well as Charles Grodin and Diana Rigg with special cameo appearances by John Cleese, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov, and Jack Warden. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company and distributed by Universal Pictures. In the plot, the Muppets are caught up in a jewel heist while investigating a robbery in London.
Gideon Stargrave is a comics character created by Grant Morrison in 1978 for the anthology comic Near Myths, and later incorporated into their series The Invisibles. The character is based on J. G. Ballard's "The Day of Forever" and Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius, which led to accusations of plagiarism from Moorcock.
The Dancers at the End of Time is a series of science fiction novels and short stories written by Michael Moorcock, the setting of which is the End of Time, an era "where entropy is king and the universe has begun collapsing upon itself". The inhabitants of this era are immortal decadents, who create flights of fancy via the use of power rings that draw on energy devised and stored by their ancestors millions of years prior. Time travel is possible, and throughout the series various points in time are visited and revisited. Space travellers are also common, but most residents of the End of Time find leaving the planet distasteful and clichéd. The title of the series is itself taken from a poem by a fictitious 19th-century poet, Ernest Wheldrake, which Mrs. Amelia Underwood quotes in The End of All Songs. "Ernest Wheldrake" had been a pseudonym used by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
The Final Programme is a 1973 British fantasy science fiction film directed by Robert Fuest, and starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre. It was based on the 1968 Jerry Cornelius novel of the same name by Michael Moorcock. It was distributed in the United States and elsewhere as The Last Days of Man on Earth. It is the only Moorcock novel to have reached the screen.
The Thief of Bagdad is a 1940 British Technicolor historical fantasy film, produced by Alexander Korda and directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan, with additional contributions by William Cameron Menzies and Korda brothers Vincent and Zoltán. The film stars Indian-born teen actor Sabu, Conrad Veidt, John Justin, and June Duprez. It was released in the US and the UK by United Artists.
To Catch a Thief is a 1952 thriller novel by David Dodge. The scene is the French Riviera, and the time is 1951.
Chain of Command is a 2000 political thriller TV film, produced by Cinetel Films and starring Roy Scheider and Patrick Muldoon. It premiered on HBO in July 2000.
Ant-Man is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The third character to use the Ant-Man name, he was created by Robert Kirkman and Phil Hester, and first appears in The Irredeemable Ant-Man #1.
The Final Programme is a novel by British science fiction and fantasy writer Michael Moorcock. Written in 1965 as the underground culture was beginning to emerge, it was not published for several years. Moorcock has stated that publishers at the time considered it was "too freaky".
This is a bibliography of the works of Michael Moorcock.
Chorr Police is an Indian animated television series that aired on Disney XD (India). As the title suggests, it is about a thief and a policeman. The show is available in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.
Jeff Gordon, Secret Agent is a 1963 French-Italian comedy crime film directed by Raoul André that stars Eddie Constantine, Perrette Pradier and Daniel Emilfork. A caper, it follows the adventures of Jeff Gordon, a tough FBI agent chasing an international jewel thief, who is helped by Lisa, an attractive private investigator.