name that gun

[otomik]

william gibson in neuromancer wrote:
Shin's pistol was a fifty-year-old Vietnamese imitation of a South American copy of a Walther PPK, double-action on the first shot, with a very rough pull. It was chambered for .22 long rifle, and Case would've preferred lead azide explosives to the simple Chinese hollowpoints Shin had sold him. Still, it was a handgun and nine rounds of ammunition, and as he made his way down Shiga from the sushi stall he cradled it in his jacket pocket. The grips were bright red plastic molded in a raised dragon motif, something to run your thumb across in the dark.

i'm looking to identify this odd literary gun. gibson also seems to describe the same gun in his short story "new rose hotel".

william gibson in new rose hotel wrote:
Sometimes I take your little automatic out of my bag, run my thumb down smooth, cheap chrome. Chinese .22, its bore no wider than the dilated pupils of your vanished eyes... Your cheap little gun in the New Rose Hotel. Ale chrome is starting to peel. The machining is clumsy, blurry Chinese stamped into rough steel. The grips are red plastic, molded with a dragon on either side. Like a child's toy.

the south american copy could be refering to some model of blowback Bersa. i don't know much about chinese or vietnamese communist guns chiefly because i'm of the opinion there isn't much to know (all copies). i have a hunch that it's a real gun because gibson seems to know something when he mentions the walther ppk notorious double action trigger pull, he also talks about shooting his P-38 in his youth in his poem "agrippa".

 

[D.W. Drang]

Since it's a work of fiction I just figured it was something he made up, and didn't worry about it.

 

[blades67]

would've preferred lead azide explosives to the simple Chinese hollowpoints

Like the above, it's fiction. He found a description that gun folks don't send hate mail about, so he recycles it. Nothing to get excited about