Every once in a while a book comes along that combines larger-than-life epic adventure; idiomatic, pungent historical detail and genuine storytelling panache. Tom Bradby’s The Master of Rain is such a book, carrying the reader headlong into a breathless tale of double-dealing and murder in 1920s Shanghai. What’s more, Bradby never allows his sprawling canvas to overwhelm his beleaguered characters who always remain in keen focus.

Richard Field, Bradby’s resourceful protagonist, has been seconded to the police force in the turbulent city of Shanghai. He finds a jostling mélange of British Imperial civil servants, American gunrunners and vicious Chinese gangsters. The grisly case he is landed with involves the mutilated body of a young White Russian woman and Field discovers that her neighbour, Natasha Medvedev, is somehow crucial to the investigation. But Natasha’s only agenda is self-preservation and Field finds himself unwisely falling in love with her. Can he crack the mystery before the next victim falls--particularly as the signs are that it is to be Natasha?

This is splendidly evocative writing from the author of the first-rate Shadow Dancer. Masterly in its depiction of a beautiful, dirty and corrupt city and a population in thrall to the imperatives of the market: human life, like everything else in Shanghai, has its price. Field is the perfect conduit for the reader through the glittering decay of the city and his relationships (both with the beguiling Natasha and the panoply of quirky, dangerous characters he encounters) are adroitly handled by Bradby. The book is nearly 500 pages long but the reader will find that it has the pace and compulsiveness of a short story. --Barry Forshaw

From Publishers Weekly

British TV newsman Bradby used his time in Hong Kong to do some research on 1920s-era Shanghai, the result of which is this hefty first novel of corruption, debauchery and decaying colonialism. Richard Field, a young policeman from Yorkshire, lands a job in the Special Branch of Shanghai's police department circa 1926. Honest but naeve, the Englishman falls into a snake pit of corruption and rivalry, revealed when a Russian prostitute is savagely murdered by a maniac. The trail leads to local gangster "Pockmark" Lu Huang, a powerful opium smuggler; when evidence begins disappearing and mysterious cash deposits are made to his bank account, Field knows the department is dirty, but can't get support from anyone except his sidekick Caprisi (a pugnacious American transplant who cut his teeth fighting Capone in Chicago). What's more, Field falls hard for the dead Russian's neighbor, Natasha Medvedev, who is one of "Lu's girls" and therefore, as Field discovers, highly likely to meet a fate similar to her neighbor's, which Field learns is only one in a string of such homicides. But when Field's investigation threatens Lu's opium ring, Lu lashes out at the foreign police force and the body count rises precipitously. The novel works better as a multilayered mystery than as a period piece, as the background historical issues are obscured by the more modern focus on frenzied sex and death. Likewise, the obvious film noir look the author goes for is undermined by the late 20th-century serial-killer shtick he injects into the plot. Despite the periodic glimpse of Western elitism and building Chinese sympathy for communism, there is remarkably little use of local color (language, food, local customs) to satisfy readers of historical thrillers, though the mystery plot doesn't disappoint. Major ad/promo; author tour.

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4.5�toiles sur 5 (4 �valuations de client)

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4.0�toiles sur 5 A good read, Jui 11 2002

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Exciting and well written. I read Barbara Hoffert's critical review and noted that she couldn't even spell the author's name correctly!

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5.0�toiles sur 5 Mystery at its best!, Mai 22 2002

Par	Charlie B. (fairfax, va United States) - Voir tous mes commentaires

What a page turner! Very much reminded me of the excitement present in Caleb Carr's work. This book abounds with all of the ingredients that make up a good murder mystery: politics, greed, and sex. Set in Shanghai during the 20's, Bradby brings the reader on a journey of intrigue and fast paced drama. You will walk away with a keen sense of the social climate of China before it fell to Communism but you will not quite understand how you got it, for the message is subtle. Bradby does not drown you with pages of detail but gently weaves it through out the story.
Not knowing much of China myself, I felt a weird sense of sympathy for the country and could almost see the purpose that communism served there. Through his diverse characters, you will obtain insight into the impact of foreigners on the country, the division of classes within its borders, the skin trade, drug smuggling, and the brutality inherent in organized crime.
A brilliant book! A history lesson on a subject rarely talked about with the bonus of a solid mystery. A little slow in starting out but stick with it, once it takes off it is worth it.

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4.0�toiles sur 5 Sex killings in Shanghai, Mai 6 2002

Par	Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - Voir tous mes commentaires (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

British author Bradby evokes teeming, profit-driven, colonially divided 1920s Shanghai in a story of sexual murder and colonial corruption. Sweltering in his one good Yorkshire suit, Richard Field, newcomer to the special branch of Britain's Shanghai police force, is immediately plunged into the intricacies of political turf and criminal expediency when assigned to the vicious murder of a Russian émigré prostitute.

Partnered by a seasoned, tough American cop, Field learns that the dead girl is one of a string of sexual slayings, all Russian prostitutes belonging to Chinese mob boss Lu Huang. Falling for another of Huang's Russian girls and bewildered by his department's complacency in accommodating the crime boss, Field ignores myriad warnings and plunges into Shanghai's underworld, determined to track the serial killer and bring down Huang.

Like a Russian nesting doll, the plot's layers split to reveal new layers. Cracks lead into every aspect of the city's ruling life, exposing the ruthless ascendancy of greed. Bradby packs in enough historical atmosphere to be dizzying - the rising communist sympathies, the frictions between British and French, exploited by the Chinese, the secret-harboring expatriates of colonial life and the flourishing lure of decadence, to name a few. Bradby occasionally grows overwrought melding his intricate plot with the intricate history, but both draw in the reader and the ending, while unlikely, is satisfying.

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5.0�toiles sur 5 a gripping, haunting and compelling read
Reading "The Master of Rain" is a bit like immersing yourself in a really good and gripping black and white American noir flick from the '40s. Read more

Publi� le Mai 6 2002 par tregatt

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