Detailed look at crime in Shanghai during the 1930-1940's. Drugs, gambling , murder, prostitution and more. Focusing on the rise and fall of Jack Riley and Joe Farren. Well written. ( )

Impeccable Details, Odd Language

Paul French's "Midnight in Peking" was a wonderfully-written, well-researched book that looked at Westerners living in Beijing in 1937. It mostly used China and Chinese people as a prop to tell the true story of a murder. "City of Devils" is quite similar, although this book looks at two Western gangsters in Shanghai.

On the plus side, the research seems incredible. As with most true crime, minor details are added such as what characters were thinking and descriptions of their personal surroundings. This makes the book historical fiction, according to some professional reviewers. French uses geographic details to good effect.

Unfortunately, the James Cagney-esque slang used on literally every page is laughable. This Hollywood version of gangsters culture is more funny than it is serious, and that greatly detracts from the narrative. Perhaps this gossipy language was borrowed from his English language sources, but what the intended effect is, I don't know.

The slang coupled with the Western-centric focus made brought this book down tremendously. ( )

A curious and interesting book. It's actually fiction, though it appears to be based quite heavily on real events of inter-war Shanghai, with real people. The book contains a number of seemingly authentic newspaper clippings and the like. The principal characters are a European Jew who develops a sparkling nightclub, complete with dancers, and a tough American, an escaped ex-con, who becomes, for a brief time, king of the slots in Shanghai. Needless to say, it doesn't end well for many characters, and that's even before the Japanese get involved. Recommended for sheer atmosphere. ( )

Passionnant et effrayant, donné ( )

I have read a lot of books about Shanghai since I first lived there in 1989, and this is one of the two best (along with Georges Spunt's A Place in Time). French takes us to pre-WW2 Shanghai and gives us a ringside seat as it begins to disintegrate under the pressure of drugs, crime, and then--far worse--the Japanese invasion of China. But of course, Shanghai has always been, and still is, about money. And there was money to be made by the bucketful if you didn't mind putting aside morals--not that those were a popular thing in Shanghai. The story centers on two men, Jack Riley, and Joe Farren, both of whom had little choice but to make it in Shanghai if they were going to make it anywhere. Riley had been an American sailor in the Far East and knocked about its cities, including Shanghai, which was the biggest and baddest of the lot. After returning stateside and ending up in an Oklahoma prison for a 25-year stretch, he managed to walk away after two years, and under his new name of Riley, found his way back to Shanghai where he worked himself up to being the king of the city's slot machines, raking in thousands of dollars nightly. There was no way he was going back to America.

Farren's background was less shady. He was a dancer, who with his partner and wife, Nelly, became the toast of Shanghai, leading to his creation of one string of dancing beauties (mostly White Russian refugees) after another. Eventually, he became the owner of night clubs, but the real money there was in gambling, and that is where his partnership with Riley was born. And because Farren was Jewish, and his Austrian homeland became part of Hitler's Germany, he had no place to go either. So even as bombs fell on Shanghai and thousands died violently or froze to death in the streets, even as those with places to go boarded ships and steamed down the Huangpu to safety, Riley and Farren and a host of others stayed on, still looking to make a buck, even if more and more of what they made had to be paid to the Japanese secret police or in other forms of "taxes".

There are many other memorable characters, including a mysterious American marshal, a crime-busting federal Elliot Ness-wannabe, and club owners of all nationalities. Through French's vivid writing, we come to know them all. Some are more benign than others--but everyone has an angle that involves making money. The forces of the law are a bit overmatched.

Amazingly, French writes most of the book in first person, and it works brilliantly. It is the most immediate story about those days in Shanghai I have ever read. Details about some of the events and personalities involved are missing, and he freely admits to filling in the gaps, so the book, despite a lack of dialogue, reads more like a novel--one of the best ones you have ever read.

My caveat is that if you haven't read about the history of Shanghai, or perhaps even had the good fortune to live there, a lot of this will just seem confusing and chaotic. While French sketches in some of the background info, this is not a scholarly work of history. Rather, it is a total immersion in a time and place that was perhaps unique. I simply can't imagine it being done any better than French does it here. At times when reading this, I would just set it down for a second and marvel that not only was it one of the best books about Shanghai; it was simply one of the best books I had ever read. That judgment still holds.

The long epilogue tries to tie up a few loose ends, but given who these characters were, that is a futile task in many cases. The book also includes a cross-reference of the old names of Shanghai streets in the days of the International Settlement and the French Concession with their modern-day names, which will be of interest to those who know Shanghai.

This is simply a brilliant achievement. Please give it a try. ( )