THE ISLANDS' QUOTA

About the Book

“Dodo” (Donald Donahue) Dillon, elderly retired American diplomat leaves fundamentalist Cherry Hill Christian College in western Pennsylvania to teach a short course for the Department of Defense at a remote Indian Ocean military base. He meets Ellen Chen, a shy Chinese-American academic, and travels on with her to the Maldive Islands. There the Maldivian President asks him to find out why a garment shipment made in a factory run by Ellen’s sister has been seized by U.S. Customs.

In the course of his investigation Dodo comes across interesting archaeological remains that shed light on the Islands’ pre-Muslim past and is almost drowned by a tidal wave. He is seduced by Chen Tingjing, the beautiful and ruthless garment factory boss and discovers through “Arthur,” a Maldivian who wishes to be a fashion designer but whom Tingjing uses as a valet, that she is a very wayward young woman.

Dodo gets a U.S. Customs representative drunk in Colombo to learn the story behind the quota problem. When he confronts Chen Tingjing with her evil doings she threatens to make public pictures of the two of them in bed together,

When Dodo and the Maldivian Minister of the Interior charge her she seeks but does not get support from the Government of the Peoples Republic of China. She sets fire to the garment factory and sails away on her yacht. Dodo promises the Maldivian President and the Minister of the Interior that he will take care of Arthur at CHCC.

That young man disappears almost as soon as he arrives at the college. Dodo is sent to New York to try to find him by his friend, Emerson Ezchiel Dalhgren, President of CHCC, who wants to protect a free vacation he has been promised in the Maldives. In New York he discovers not only Arthur but Ellen Chen and Chen Tingjing. The last, having married an eighty-five year old tycoon, is now owner-manager of a chain of exclusive fashion stores, for which Arthur is the chief designer. Thanks to an endowment from the tycoon, Ellen is now a full professor at Brown University.

His island adventure over Dodo settles back down at CHCC.

About the Author

James W. Spain, born in Chicago in 1926 not far from the Englewood Rail Yards, grew up during the Great Depression, and was educated at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He spent most of his life as a career diplomat, serving as U.S. Ambassador in Tanzania, the United Nations, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. He is the author of three books on the Pathans of Pakistan; American Diplomacy in Turkey; a diplomatic memoir, In Those Days ; a book of short stories, Innocents of the Latter Day; and several “Dodo Dillon” tales about the adventures of a retired American diplomat in exotic corners of the world.