A Good Mystery/Adventure to Pass Some Time

books:


	• The Master of Rain Tom Bradby, 2002 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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superb thriller with exotic setting

Shanghai 1926 -- a humid, brooding city carved up between competing interests. The British, Americans and French all have their own imperialist enclaves, each with its own police force. Corrupt, fabulously wealthy businessmen make vast fortunes smuggling drugs and other contraband, dealing in prostitution and child abuse. The Chinese communist underground is trying to build strenth; the local Chinese mobster has national aspirations as well. And thousands of White Russian refugees, forced to flee their homeland after the Bolshevik revolution, scrape a living using whatever means they can.
Richard Land, a young Yorkshireman, arrives seeking to build a career in the British police force and quickly finds himself investigating the brutal slaying of a Russian girl. He is caught up in events he barely understands, buffeted between competing factions in the British community, appalled at their decadence and corruption and the general brutality and cheapness of life in Shanghai. He also falls in love with another Russian girl -- is she a witness, a victim or a collaborator?
This is a superb thriller. It does what all such books ought to do -- transports the reader to a time and place far away and makes it seem authentic. The characters are flesh and blood and their dilemmas seem real.
I knew nothing about Shanghai in this period but the author's prodigious research brings it to life. You smell the squalid stink of the sweating city. I knew little about the plight of White Russians -- the author rescues them from history.
There are a couple of awkward moments -- phrases that seem to belong more to 2000 than 1926 (one character is said to be "anal") and I wasn't enthralled with the sex -- but those are minor quibbles. I admired this book greatly -- and enjoyed it even more.
For more on my book, The Nazi Hunter: A Novel and me, go to www.alanelsner.com.

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A Good Mystery/Adventure to Pass Some Time

In Tom Bradby's "The Master of Rain", detective Richard Field must struggle through the various dangers and pleasures of 1926 Shanghai, all while pursuing a deadly serial killer who specializes in sadistic murders of Russian women. Field, a Briton with family issues that drive him to this far outpost of the Empire, forges a friendship with an American colleague from Chicago, Anthony Caprisi. In the convoluted world of Shanghai's International Settlement, the city is jointly administered primarily by British, French and American governments; meanwhile, the great cultural and demographic pulse of China pushes in from all directions. Field works in the anti-communist portion of the police, while Caprisi is a street policeman specializing in crime. When a dead Russian suspected of prostitution turns up dead, and killed in a ritualistic manner, the two men are brought together; Field also meets a seductive and mysterious Russian woman and the catalyst for the book's main drama and mystery is ignited.

The novel's atmospherics work well, and Bradby exploits the interaction between a city on the brink of revolution and Field's own personal and professional crises well. Somehow he pulls off the romance between Natasha and Field in a way that works, and the internecine conflict within Shanghai's powers-that-be adds a new level of suspicion and tension. The dialogue is terse and blunt, and it comes off with a hard-hitting staccato that drives the chapters forward. These are the novel's best elements.

Throughout the story Field must continually reassess his naivety, and sometime about halfway through the book this begins to irritate. There are a few events that were written in to give some `hints' that pretty much give the story away; and you will find yourself wondering why detective Field doesn't put the pieces together more quickly. The tale takes up a life of its own- almost as if Brady is extending the mystery so that it will last long enough for the novel's other crises to come to fruition. I think Bradby's Film Noir writing style becomes somewhat forced at this point as well, and these constitutes the biggest critiques that I have for the novel, which is otherwise good.

Still, despite the story's flaws, it is an entertaining read- Bradby's writing will merit further attention in the future, especially as his style matures. For another author to recommend to those looking for more mystery/adventure/espionage thrills I will highly recommend Alan Furst's novels, beginning with "Night Soldiers".

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Shanghai, 1926: a sultry city lousy with opium, warlords, and corruption at the highest levels. Into this steamy morass walks Richard Field, an idealistic Brit haunted by his past and recently appointed to the international police. He?s not there long before called to the flat of a Russian prostitute, former daughter of privilege found sadistically murdered, handcuffed to her bed. When he discovers among her possessions a cryptic shipping log, he senses that this murder is more than a random crime of perverse passion. What unfolds is a searing story that propels Field into a confrontation with the city?s most ruthless and powerful gangster, and a dangerous attraction to another salacious Russian whose sordid connections seem destined to make her the next victim. Scintillating and subtle, The Master of Rain is a marvelous debut.

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