1930s-1940s Shanghai Mystery Series

  
FLEEING THE DRAGON by

Fleeing the Dragon

SHANGHAI, CHINA. 1945. What if you are ordered to solve a complicated crime, under almost impossible conditions, and will face unthinkable repercussions if you fail to promptly deliver the solution?

That is what happens to Shanghai-based private investigator Sun-jin when the exiled president of China orders him to find out who tried to assassinate his wife when she was on a secret diplomatic mission for him in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.

With the clock ticking, Sun-jin quickly learns that solving a crime in an enemy-occupied city — even a city you know like the back of your hand — is neither easy nor safe. There are curfews to deal with, informants everywhere, patrolling enemy soldiers to avoid, and restrictions on visiting parts of the city.

Will Sun-jin be able to ask his questions, visit prohibited places, fend off informants, and poke his nose where it doesn’t belong, and still avoid being accused by the Japanese of spying for China?

Will he solve the mystery in time to avoid punishment by China’s president?

FLEEING THE DRAGON is a fast-paced historical mystery, full of twists and turns, that dishes out the exotic flavors of Shanghai in the final year of World War II.

FLEEING THE DRAGON can be purchased at AMAZON.

SLEEPING WITH THE TIGER by

Sleeping With The Tiger

SHANGHAI. DECEMBER 1941. Someone has murdered the city’s most powerful Chinese Comprador — just as the world is about to explode into World War II.

The city is roiling. The Japanese military, already fighting an undeclared war with China, has steadily increased its armed presence in Shanghai. Only Britain’s International Settlement and France’s French Concession, both precariously-situated treaty enclaves within Shanghai’s city limits, remain free from Japanese occupation.

Within this seething cauldron of conflicting interests and desires, where money, greed, organized crime, and military power rule, private investigator Sun-jin comes face-to-face with an elaborate web of deceit and intrigue as he tracks down the killer.

SLEEPING WITH THE TIGER is a highly entertaining, well-plotted historical mystery. It is the perfect novel for the reader who enjoys complex plots populated with exotic settings and intriguing characters.

SLEEPING WITH THE TIGER is full of unexpected twists and turns the reader will not see coming. It is one of those rare “whodunits” that makes the reader want to turn “just one more page” before putting the book down for the night.

SLEEPING WITH THE TIGER can be purchased at AMAZON.

DEATH OF THE YELLOW SWAN by

Death Of The Yellow Swan

SHANGHAI, 1937. Someone has killed the Yellow Swan

Who murdered that beautiful, beguiling, erotic half-Japanese, half-Chinese nightclub singer with whom all of Shanghai is enthralled.

Was it one of her jealous lovers? Was it the nearby, hovering Japanese military who thought she was a spy for the Chinese? Or was it the Chinese who thought she was a spy for the Japanese?

As July’s heat and humidity wrap themselves around the city, and suck the energy from Shanghai’s Chinese, Japanese, and British communities, tensions steadily rise. The Japanese military is looking for any excuse to occupy Shanghai and to promote its plan to conquer Asia. Will the murder of its national — the Yellow Swan — give the army the “Incident” it has been looking for?

Not if Sun-jin has anything to say about it. Solving the murder becomes Sun-jin’s race against the clock.

As Sun-jin rushes to identify the Yellow Swan’s killer — with the clock ticking down and with obstacle after obstacle springing up to block him — he takes us through the exotic world of Shanghai in 1937, with its back-alley informants, its all-night entertainment clubs, its sing-song girls, its crime bosses, and its criminal triads.

Watching through Sun-jin’s eyes, we experience — in this mystery full of twists and turns — the best and the worst aspects of this pleasure-mad, strife-ridden city, as it teeters on the brink of World War II.

DEATH OF THE YELLOW SWAN can be purchased at AMAZON.

Death In The Flowery Kingdom by

Death In The Flowery Kingdom

SHANGHAI, 1935. The Most Alluring and Most Dangerous City in the World

Someone is murdering flower-seller girls in Shanghai’s Flowery Kingdom. And it is police Inspector-Detective Sun-jin’s job — his obsession, in fact — to track down the killer and to arrest him, all at great peril to himself and to the people he loves.

Sun-jin, as he investigates the murders and deals with his complicated personal life, takes us though the contrasting worlds of East and West in Shanghai — down the city’s dark alleys and streets, through its gritty, crime-infested, triad-controlled underworld, but also into the plush private clubs of its British expatriates and bureaucrats, into the world of popular nightclubs, jazz bands, taxi dancers, and gambling dens, where money and greed thrive, human life means little, and cultures and politics often collide.

Through Sun-jin’s eyes, as he investigates the murders, we see the best and the worst of this pleasure-mad, rapacious, corrupt, strife-ridden, licentious, highly cultured, enticing, and most decadent city in the world, in 1935.

DEATH IN THE FLOWERY KINGDOM can be purchased at AMAZON.