By Tom Bradby
Shanghai in 1926 is a city of money and murder. As American and British industrialists and Chinese gangsters reap fortunes, the corrupt police ignore the gruesome slayings of Russian prostitutes. No one bothers much with solving the crimes except an idealistic young English inspector, Richard Field.
Author Bradby, a foreign correspondent for British TV before he was shot and wounded in Indonesia in 1999, has done his historical homework. But the vividly realized settings shame the genre clichés. Bradby even grinds his spurs into that workhorse of today's crime drama, the psychological profiler, to say things like, "He has done this before. It will certainly continue now." (Doubleday, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Routine fare served on fine China
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