The Master of Rain
Tom Bradby's third novel (though his first to be published in the U.S.)  is a feverish work of historical noir, a labyrinthine thriller set in a vicious  world where everyone--as in Bogart'sCasablanca--has a reason for hiding.  The year is 1926; the city is Shanghai, a swamp of organized crime, corruption,  turf wars between British intelligence and street-level law enforcement,  Communist sympathizers, and East European refugees from Bolshevik atrocities.  Into this sweltering, cutthroat port city steps Richard Field, an idealistic  policeman from Yorkshire looking to distance himself from a painful past.  Ill-suited to Shanghai's heat and shocking violence, Field nevertheless throws  himself into investigating the grisly murder of a Russian prostitute, the latest  in a line of dead women who lived in the orbit of a powerful Chinese mobster.  Slowed by official roadblocks, Field learns that the only man in his department  he can trust is a tough Chicago detective, Caprisi, a touchstone of sanity even  as Field loses his rookie head over another doomed Russian call girl.Bradby, a seasoned correspondent for Britain's ITN television network, has  obviously spent considerable time researching 1920s Shanghai. His feel for the  city's Byzantine society and exotic textures is matched by his accessible vision  of Shanghai as a junction of international fallout and internal intrigue. Less  compelling, if not outright distracting, is Bradby's more contemporary emphasis  on ghastly serial killings with a sex-crime edge. But in the end, the book's  remarkable prose and density of experience are uniquely rewarding.--Tom  Keogh--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.