James Clavell's "Noble House" is an extravagantly romantic novel for people who really like to spend time reading novels. It's fiction for addicts….

It has 30 or 40 characters—many with interchangeable attitudes, body builds and speech habits. Thus you can concentrate on the dramatic action and tough talk instead of complexities like character and motive. It has so many plot lines—I counted at least 13 plots crisscrossing through the novel—that you can story-hop, like changing TV channels, whenever your interest in one of them wanes….

From start to finish the novel follows the economic war for control of the Noble House; there are shifting alliances, attacks on banks and airlines, partial truces, parleys at lavish parties, and references by all to Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." (p. 13)

Once Mr. Clavell has the Noble House under pressure, he explodes this story into connecting plots involving Hong Kong police...