Review: Brilliant and entertaining
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 5, 2014
This is the story of a young Irishman who takes a job as a cop in Shanghai in the 1920s. The book alternates chapters on his life in Ireland and his adventures as a cop in Shanghai. This is much more an epic saga than a thriller.Michael Gallagher is obsessed by the memory of a young girl he loved, the daughter of an Irish Lord. He thinks that she died in a fire, at the same time as his own father, but this may not be true. Raised by a strict and loyal father (also a cop), he has inherited his father's decency. How can he hold to any purity in the atmosphere of corruption of Shanghai where everybody is paid by gangsters, even the police? The whole world seems to be crumbling around him in this period leading to World War II, and there is nothing he can do about it. This feeling of inadequacy permeates the book. Little by little Gallagher enters the world of the gangsters, making friends, meeting prostitutes, accepting money. In the end, will he find any kind of happiness, regain his bearings and escape Shanghai? That is the subject of the book.There are a few technical flaws that need to be repaired in the next edition.