In this book, a former CIA field agent and now businessman travels to China to renegotiate his supply contracts but suddenly finds himself in a race to save himself and an innocent child from the most powerful criminal gang in the country.
If you fancy novels that give off the same thrill and perplexity as Bourne, Jack Ryan, and Mitch Rapp series? Then pick up The Secret Empress (iUniverse; 2019) by Frank R. Heller.
To write The Secret Empress, the author drew upon his thirty years of experience working in and traveling to China in the import business – and a ‘what if’ moment.
“The book was really a question of curiosity,” Heller said during his guesting on Kate Delaney’s radio talk show America Tonight, “All the trips that we (he and his father-in-law) made to China, we did some sightseeing as well as business. I had been fascinated by the history of the country, which is incredible when you get into it.
“One day, we were in Beijing. We were touring the Forbidden City, and there is the Hall of Harmony where the imperial throne sits. It’s called the Dragon Throne. If you remember, there was a movie called The Last Emperor, the story of Puyi and what happened with him. In the film, his wife was pregnant, went into labor, and died in childbirth along with the child.
“I was standing in the Hall of Harmony, looking at this incredible throne and the question came up, ‘what if?’ What if the child hadn’t died? What would happen to the line of succession? That kind of spurred a long train of questions that ultimately culminated into the storyline.”
This ‘long train of questions’ formed the narrative for The Secret Empress, which revolves around international espionage, ancient Chinese history, and modern drug trafficking. In this story, Joe Wilder, a founder of a billion-dollar health and fitness conglomerate, travels to Guangdong, China upon learning that the Chinese government plans to excessively raise the price on his contracts.
Wilder meets with Wen Shu Xian (“Wendy”), the deputy minister of trade, and it turns out that the contracts are merely a ruse to bring him to China. Wendy reveals to Wilder that she is secretly the empress of China, the daughter of Emperor Puyi, the last emperor of China. She asks him for his help in bringing her 12-year-old son and heir, Chao Li, (“Charley”) to America where he could live freely and without fear.
It seems like an easy job for Wilder, given his CIA background, and the job guarantees him the renewal of his contracts. However, when Wendy is found murdered, things get really serious, and a criminal organization is on the hunt for them to either kill or exploit the secret heir to expand their operations in Asia.
The Secret Empress brings no political message but only entertainment to readers who love action thrillers. “It wasn’t intended to be a message,” Heller told WOCA The Source Radio. “It was intended to be entertaining because I spent a lot of time on airplanes and going through books, either flying out or flying back. It was intended to be a quick read, enjoyable, intriguing, thrilling, and kind of a travelogue.”
An action thriller that ticks, The Secret Empress by Frank R. Heller is available on Amazon.
The Secret Empress will be displayed by self-publishing and book marketing company ReadersMagnet at their exhibit for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 23-24, 2022, at the University of Southern California campus, Los Angeles, CA.
Quote | “Fantastic thriller… featuring a square-jawed hero, ruthless villains, and a royal in distress.” Foreward Clarion Review
The Secret Empress
Author | Frank R. Heller
Published date | March 2019
Publisher | iUniverse
Book retail price | $26.99
Frank Heller’s “The Secret Empress” follows Joe Wilder, a man who has turned a championship body building career into a billion-dollar health and fitness conglomerate, as he travels to China to renegotiate his supply contracts when his business faces sudden massive price increases. The Deputy Minister of Trade for Guangdong Province offers Joe an incredible deal that will guarantee his supply lines for the next ten years. As with any deal sweetheart deal, the Deputy Minister of Trade has a small request, a simple favor, in exchange. She asks him to help her 12-year-old son, Choa Li (Charley) travel to America.
This seemingly simple quid pro quo takes a horrific turn when the Deputy Minister of Trade is brutally murdered within hours of signing the new contracts. In that instant, Joe Wilder becomes the prime suspect in her murder and the sole guardian of a 12-year-old boy. The CIA station chief at the American Embassy in Beijing tells Joe that it will take four days to set up an escape route to get the two of them out of the country. The bad news is that he and Charley are being hunted by the oldest and most powerful criminal gang in China – the Bai Lang. Joe Wilder must draw upon the almost forgotten skills of his youth as a secret CIA field agent to evade the countless drug dealers, thugs and petty criminals – allies of the Bai Lang. In a race across the country, Joe and Charley must stay alive for the next four days and get to Shanghai in time to make their escape!
Spy thriller fans will be in for a treat with “The Secret Empress”. It is the riveting story of an American entrepreneur who must tap into his past as a CIA in order to save the life of an innocent child and honor the last request of a Chinese official.
About the Author
Frank Heller has written and published biographical and exhibition catalogs on American and European artists, some of which are housed in the Smithsonian Institution libraries in Washington, D.C. He served in the US Navy as a hospital corpsman during the Viet Nam War. For “The Secret Empress” he drew upon his more than 30 years of experience in the import business traveling to and working in China.
Clarion Review ★★★★★
The Secret Empress
Frank R. Heller
iUniverse (Mar 8, 2019)
Hardcover $26.99 (232pp)
978-1-5320-6832-4
The Secret Empress is a fantastic thriller that’s traditional in style, featuring a square-jawed hero, ruthless villains, and a royal in distress.
In Frank R. Heller’s exciting thriller The Secret Empress, the focus is international espionage that’s rooted in ancient Chinese history and modern drug trafficking.
Joe Wilder is a former world champion bodybuilder turned corporate mogul. He runs a massive health and fitness company in Los Angeles. Wilder is also a former CIA asset who quit government service after he failed to save a young bystander during a terror attack in Paris. Years later,
Wilder is brought back into the world of espionage thanks to Michael Fitzpatrick, the CIA’s man in Beijing, and a Guangzhou-based CEO, Wendy Shu Xian.
Wendy, in addition to being a wealthy businesswoman, is the daughter of Puyi, the last Qing emperor of China. In her dying days, Wendy leaves Charley, her daughter and the last member of the Qing line, in Wilder’s care. It’s up to Wilder to keep Charley safe from the White Wolf tong, a small army of Chinese drug dealers obsessed with expanding their wealth and influence in Asia.
This political potboiler gets right down to its action, with a death in the opening pages and all of the main characters introduced with minimal fanfare thereafter. Deeds, not descriptions, drive its momentum, and there are a lot of such deeds.
Wilder and Charley are perfect foils for each other, and their relationship is both best buddy and odd couple in nature. Wilder is rugged but haunted; Charley is young and innocent, and does not comprehend her noble lineage or potential power. Fitzpatrick functions as a milquetoast bureaucrat who provides a few moments of levity, while other supporting characters, including Wilder’s ultra-organized secretary, play small but important roles in the story.
Standout villains in the White Wolf tong and the Bai Lang army are serious and efficient gangsters—a dark reflection of the legitimate businessman and American patriot Wilder. However, their motivations for capturing Charley are unclear, even though Wendy tells Wilder early on in the novel that they would love to kill to the last Qing royal. The White Wolf threaten Wilder and Charley’s escape at every turn, even if a happy ending is never in doubt.
The chapters are long, but they move with speed, and the book’s language is straightforward and clear. Historical errors (the first emperor of the Qing dynasty is misnamed, and the ethnic origins of the Qing are overlooked, for
example) and the glossing over of historical elements mar the work, though, compromising excitement around Charley’s claims to the Qing throne.
The Secret Empress is a fantastic thriller that’s traditional in style, featuring a square-jawed hero, ruthless villains, and a royal in distress.
BENJAMIN WELTON (July 23, 2019)
THE SECRET EMPRESS
Frank R. Heller
iUniverse (232 pp.)
$26.99 hardcover, $13.99 paperback, $3.99 e-book
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6831-7; March 7, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
In Heller’s debut thriller, a retired CIA operative is recruited to protect the secret heir to China’s dynastic throne from ruthless gangsters.
Joe Wilder was once a government agent as well as a bodybuilding champion, but he’s now the founder of a billion-dollar health and fitness conglomerate. He receives word that the Chinese government plans to excessively raise the price on his contracts in Guangdong, so he immediately travels there to meet with Wen Shu Xian, the local deputy minister of trade, in order to plead his case. However, it turns out that the contracts were merely a ruse, and the minister, who goes by the name “Wendy,” reveals that she’s secretly the empress of China—the daughter of Emperor Puyi, the last emperor of the Manchu Qing dynasty. She also has a 12-year-old son and heir, Chao Li, nicknamed “Charley,” whose very existence is kept under wraps, as many people would attempt to either kill him or exploit him for personal gain. Wendy asks Joe to bring Charley to the United States, where he can live freely, without fear. Joe accepts the assignment—one for which he is well-suited, given his past as an accomplished CIA field operative. However, Wendy is found dead shortly
afterward, and the Bai Lang, a criminal organization that dates back to the Opium Wars, unleashes a menacing, German “covert assassin,” named Max Sterne, among others. In this thriller, Heller conjures a remarkably ingenious premise with the secret Chinese dynasty, and he always makes sure that the plot races forward at a blistering pace throughout the novel. Along the way, he provides readers with equal measures of suspenseful and action-packed sequences. The author’s knowledge of Chinese history and culture is impressive, and even when the story doesn’t seem entirely plausible, it’s never so dubious as to be distracting. That said, the prose style can be overly earnest at times: “Who are you kidding? he thought. You’re enjoying the intrigue and the danger!” Even so, the tale remains consistently dramatic and engrossing throughout.
A tale of intrigue that’s thrilling enough to overcome its lack of realism.
The Secret Empress
Frank R. Heller
iUniverse, 232 pages, (paperback) $13.99, 9781532068324
(Reviewed: July 2019)
In this engaging thriller, an American businessman is thrust into the position of safeguarding a child in China and helping him flee to the U.S.
Joe Wilder is a former CIA agent who has parlayed his bodybuilding titles into a successful health and fitness business conglomerate. When his supply line in China is threatened by price increases, he flies to China to meet with Wen Shu Xian (“Wendy”), the deputy minister of trade for the Guangdong province, to smooth out the complications. While he’s there, she asks for his
help in a personal matter.
As it turns out, Wendy’s mother was married to the last Emperor of China in 1962, and her rights as surviving heir and Empress of China are a long-held secret. The concern has always been that her existence will cause political upheaval in China, which could benefit warring factions, such as the Bai Lang, a mafia-like group who would love to use her title to their own advantage. But the secret is out now, and Wendy, who is dying from cancer, needs Joe’s help to get her 12-year-old son out of the country to safety.
As with any good thriller, the story has all the elements of success: a likeable hero, a potential romance, a high stakes game of chase, and an unexpected ending. Heller has a deft touch, providing readers with a strong sense of place as the characters zig-zag through China, and generally walking the line between plausible and unconvincing as the characters sidestep one dilemma after another. In addition, anyone who has ever taken a bus tour in a foreign country will relate to Joe’s experiences as a tourist as his guide frantically tries to corral her group on and off the buses among the milling crowds.
Needless to say, most lightweight thrillers require some suspension of disbelief, and that is true here. But anyone who wants a quick read will enjoy this pleasant armchair journey to China.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
