http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051218/NEWS06/512180491/1005/ENTERTAINMENT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/arts/17trevanian.html
Rodney Whitaker, best known by the pen name Trevanian, died Wednesday. He was the author of The Eiger Sanction (made into a Clint Eastwood movie), The Summer of Katya (film version in production), and Shibumi (in development as a motion picture).
The martial arts figured into many of these novels. Savate makes a brief appearance in The Summer of Katya; The Eiger Sanction and its sequel, The Loo Sanction, both feature the main character, an American art professor-slash-assassin, defeating trained martial artists with his street fighting knowledge. (When tested for the martial arts part of his training in the second book, he defeats the instructor with a surprise attack and is given the rating "not qualified, but passed".) But Shibumi is focused on a Western-born, Japanese-raised assassin in the Ninja style (though again, with a self-training twist), somewhat reminscent of the Nicholas Linnear novels, and so has a more consistent martial arts presence.
I have read all of those books plus The Main, and I have Incident at Twenty-Mile on my shelf waiting to be read. I can definitely recommend any of them, and I especially recommend Shibumi to the martial artist.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/arts/17trevanian.html
Rodney Whitaker, best known by the pen name Trevanian, died Wednesday. He was the author of The Eiger Sanction (made into a Clint Eastwood movie), The Summer of Katya (film version in production), and Shibumi (in development as a motion picture).
The martial arts figured into many of these novels. Savate makes a brief appearance in The Summer of Katya; The Eiger Sanction and its sequel, The Loo Sanction, both feature the main character, an American art professor-slash-assassin, defeating trained martial artists with his street fighting knowledge. (When tested for the martial arts part of his training in the second book, he defeats the instructor with a surprise attack and is given the rating "not qualified, but passed".) But Shibumi is focused on a Western-born, Japanese-raised assassin in the Ninja style (though again, with a self-training twist), somewhat reminscent of the Nicholas Linnear novels, and so has a more consistent martial arts presence.
I have read all of those books plus The Main, and I have Incident at Twenty-Mile on my shelf waiting to be read. I can definitely recommend any of them, and I especially recommend Shibumi to the martial artist.
