When Ernest Gann is at the top of his game, as he was last year in "The High and the Mighty," he is very, very good indeed. When he is in something less than top form, as in this new adventure story, the seams in his cleverly stitched plots begin to show. For he is one of the leading current creators of the formula school of novel—of the Novel of Precarious Situation. Despite the vigor of his observation and the unfailing accuracy of his technical detail, a Gann novel must rise or fall on the amount of tension which the central situation generates.

"Soldier of Fortune" has an entirely adequate if scarcely original central situation. Jane Hoyt, an attractive American girl, comes to present-day Hong Kong in search of a missing husband….

So far so good. We sympathize with Jane and share her anguish. We feel the...