[Many] of the most popular contemporary novelists are storytellers. Some of them produce such crude works that they don't seem worth discussion in this space. Others, although their novels are crude also, tell their tales with such compelling force and unceasing narrative drive that they demand critical attention. James Clavell is such a writer.

His first novel, "King Rat," was an utterly engrossing tale of violence and corruption inside a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. It asked but did not answer important moral questions. Mr. Clavell's second novel, "Tai-Pan," is not nearly so good a book as its fine predecessor; but it is almost an archetype of pure story-telling. It's about the first six months of English settlement on the island of Hong Kong in 1841 and the general atmosphere of violence, intrigue and the clash of European and Asiatic ways of life seem unpleasantly reminiscent of "Hawaii."

Is "Tai-pan" only...