All the Conspirators

by Carlos Bulosan and Alex Brown

Book Overview

In this mystery thriller set at the end of World War II, American Gar Stanley returns to his native Philippines to help his childhood sweetheart locate her missing husband in the wake of a Japanese ambush. With Clem's ring as his only clue, Gar moves from the nightclubs of Manila to the mountains of Baguio, from mansions to hovels, bordellos to churches. He pursues and is pursued by bankers, matrons, hoboes, warriors, and thugs. Gar quickly realizes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 029598497X
• ISBN13: 9780295984971
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Nuanced Mystery Thriller from the 50s

On the surface Carlos Bulosan's ALL THE CONSPIRATORS is an entertaining mystery, especially as a period piece from the immediate post-WWII era. What makes the story all the more interesting are its myriad nuances. In the first place, there is the author Bulosan himself, a Philippine immigrant to the US in the 1930s whose residence began and ended in Seattle in 1956. Best known for his autobiographical AMERICA IS IN THE HEART [1946], he primarily wrote and published poetry, as well as stories that appeared in American periodicals like THE NEW YORKER and THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. He also spent time working for the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union [ILWU] Local 37, by the early Fifties the predominantly Filipino union of salmon cannery workers operating out of Seattle. [See, Chris Friday, ORGANIZING ASIAN AMERICAN LABOR: THE PACIFIC COAST CANNED SALMON INDUSTRY, 1870-1942 (1994)]. Somewhat ironically, Bulosan's fascination with American culture and politics radicalized him as he confronted America's racism and neocolonialism. This radicalization eventually led to Bulosan's second novel, THE CRY AND THE DEDICATION [not published in the US until 1994] about the Huk movement in the Philippines. [See, Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, THE HUK REBELLION: A STUDY OF PEASANT REVOLT IN THE PHILIPPINES (2ND ED., 2002)]. Both this radicalization and his association with the West Coast longshoremen's union during their communist phase in the McCarthy Era kept ALL THE CONSPIRATORS from finding a publisher until this University of Washington Press edition in 1998. Bulosan had written the story in hopes of an eventual Hollywood contract. He was convinced his politics blackballed his efforts to find a taker, like many other artists during Hollywood's Blackball Era. The story itself is nuanced because it's Bulosan's, in spite of its limited objective as a potential Hollywood thriller. In the first place the story's narrator and protagonist Gar Stanley is an American, although one born in the Philippines, where his family ran a gold mine in the pre-war American Commonwealth. Gar is also the typical ex-GI prodigal son of many late 40s, early 50s mysteries. [See, for example, Bruce Marrow in Guy Emery, FRONT FOR MURDER (1947)]. Bulosan's understanding of American culture and skill as a writer make Stanley very American. [The average reader picking up the novel without knowing its background would not suspect its authorship.] This American is then placed in the immediate post-war Philippines still struggling from the devastating Japanese occupation. The story revolves around Gar's search for his friend Clem Mayo, another Philippine-born American who had escaped the Bataan Death March to lead guerillas against the Japanese until betrayed and killed. Clem, however, had recently been reported as having been seen alive. Gar finds himself in a Philippines he both knows and loves, but also one that has drastically changed, making him a se

Written like film noir....

I was looking for America is in the Heart but found this one instead at my local bookstore, and I don't regret it. All the Conspirators was written sometime around the late 40s, and has not been reprinted until this edition published just a couple of years ago.Right after WWII, a war-jaded Philippine-born American Gar Stanley receives a ring from his best friend Clem Mayo's wife Candy. Everyone had thought Clem to be dead, until Candy had spotted the ring at a local trinket shop. She asks Gar to trace Clem...find out if he's still alive. (Tough for Gar to do, considering Candy and he'd had a thing going before he'd shipped out for the US war effort in North Africa and left Candy behind, to marry his best friend.) The quest for Clem takes us from war-ravaged Manila's girlie joints, sumptuous parties of rich Filipino families that had collaborated with the Japanese, rinky-dink alleys where throat-slitting incidents regularly occur, to a plantation house guarded by thugs named Bruiser and Killer and situated on a volcano island, then deep into tribal jungles where former guerilla resistance units have created a world of their own and where they mull their days trying to reclaim justice against politically ensconced collaborators in Manila. Classic film noir elements abound: the femme fatale, the homecoming soldier displaced in the world he fought for and blind to the real persons behind misleading appearances. Some added layers: the displacement of the hero not only as homecoming soldier but as American torn between his fatherland and his birthplace (the Philippines), the alienation among Filipinos after the war divided them into the resistance fighters and the collaborators, and the ensuing cover-up AND adoption of collaborators into institutionalized politics. Reading this novella gives one an indication the seeds of corruption had been planted way before Ferdinand Marcos...the rot comes from within, as Filipino national hero Jose Rizal had pointed out a hundred years ago. For all this--and despite the conventions it followed at the time it was written--the novella feels contemporary and remains hard-hitting.