Right You Are, Mr. Moto, The Mr. Moto Novels
In the final installment of John P. Marquand’s classic espionage series, Mr. Moto returns—15 years after his previous adventure
After serving his country as a paratrooper in World War II, Jack Rhyce takes on an even more dangerous mission when he becomes a secret agent in the early years of the Cold War. Now he and fellow spy Ruth Bogart have been dispatched to Tokyo to foil an assassination attempt on a leading liberal politician. Murder is only the first part of this nefarious Communist plot; the ultimate objective is to stir up anti-American sentiment in a country that has formed close bonds with its former adversary in the West.
Undercover as do-gooders employed by the Asia Friendship League, Jack and Ruth are met at the airport by Mr. Moto, a would-be tour guide who offers to make their stay more hospitable. The American spies immediately suspect that there is more to Mr. Moto than meets the eye. But whose side is he on? To stop the cunning mastermind behind the sinister scheme, Jack and Ruth will have to learn the secrets of post-war Japan as quickly as possible. The mysterious Mr. Moto might just be their greatest ally, or their worst enemy.
First serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, John P. Marquand’s popular and acclaimed Mr. Moto Novels were the inspiration for 8 films starring Peter Lorre.
John P. Marquand
John P. Marquand (1893–1960) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, proclaimed “the most successful novelist in the United States” by Life magazine in 1944. A descendant of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, shipping magnates Daniel Marquand and Samuel Curzon, and famed nineteenth-century writer Margaret Fuller, Marquand always had one foot inside the blue-blooded New England establishment, the focus of his social satire. But he grew up on the outside, sent to live with maiden aunts in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the setting of many of his novels, after his father lost the once-considerable family fortune in the crash of 1907. From this dual perspective, Marquand crafted stories and novels that were applauded for their keen observation of cultural detail and social mores.
By the 1930s, Marquand was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, where he debuted the character of Mr. Moto, a Japanese secret agent. No Hero, the first in a series of bestselling spy novels featuring Mr. Moto, was published in 1935. Three years later, Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Late George Apley, a subtle lampoon of Boston’s upper classes. The novels that followed, including H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), So Little Time (1943), B.F.’s Daughter (1946), Point of No Return (1949), Melvin Goodwin, USA (1952), Sincerely, Willis Wayde (1955), and Women and Thomas Harrow (1959), cemented his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary New England society and one of America’s finest writers.
