Breaking into the fiction market, never easy even in the best of times, is becoming increasingly difficult. Among the options for aspiring novelists are self-publishing and going with smaller, specialty publishers. Thanks to the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system that was introduced back in 1967, and credit-card sales via the Internet, at least it's become easier to get books distributed once they are published. The titles reviewed this month proved as easy to obtain as works from major publishers.
Let's go back to Shanghai 80 years ago. It's May 1925 again, and American casino owner Jake Greenburg is seated in an opera box beside his lady friend Claire, her young niece, Jane, and Yang, a seedy Chinese tycoon. Shots are fired, leaving Yang and Claire's niece dead. The police have their hands full with socialist agitators fomenting worker riots, so Jake, a rough-and-tumble veteran of the Great War, is left to track down the killer on his own. The trouble is, it seems about half the population of Shanghai is suspect in the murders.
Through Greenburg's eyes, the reader is soon immersed in the "paradise of adventurers," with its taipans, Russian refugees, opium dens and budding film industry. While warlords vie for power outside the boundaries of the International Settlement, the nascent Communist Party is making the rounds of the sweatshops, urging workers to strike for better conditions. Howard Turk's descriptions of the city, the gangs and the corrupt authorities in the French Concession are right on, accurately portraying the atmosphere of the period.
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