The Master of Rain

Rating:
Summary: Shanghai Confidential
Review: A dead prostitute lies in her bed, stabbed repeatedly and handcuffed to the bedposts. A morally compromised police investigator must look into her death, paying special attention to the potential political implications of the murder. Given that the setting is 1926 Shanghai, the politics are somewhat tangled: no one's really running China at the moment, warlords run rampant, and in the International Community in Shanghai (where the novel takes place) the business leaders, all of them European, fear a Bolshevik rising more than anything. The city's full of Russian exiles fleeing the Communists, Chinese gangsters, and Westerners with pasts they wish to leave behind.

This is one of the most complex, involved, atmospheric novels I've read in a good while. Think James Ellroy's L. A. Confidential, but with a Chinese setting and a more multi-culturnal cast. There is a great deal here about moral compromises, and what they do to those who make them. There's also a wonderful mystery, complete with various characters scheming to get ahead or get by or survive, using each other in the pursuit of that goal.

I frankly was amazed by this book, spent most of a Saturday afternoon trying to finish it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I would highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Hard Spoiled
Review: As a mystery/crime fan and resident of Shanghai for the last 4 years I wanted very much to like this book. Unfortunately Bradby seems to have hit on a good idea -- a gritty story set in 1920's Shanghai -- and done a lot of research, but and then forgotten to write a good story or use much care. The prose is astonishingly hackneyed for a professional journalist (and British besides!) and could have used a decent editor.

Granted, within the genre sloppy writing can be forgiven if the story is gripping enough. But I had to force myself to finish the book during a long plane flight, not the best sign for a book that is aspires primarily to be a "good read".

At times, Bradby reaches for James Ellroy-like explicitness but he's not able to handle it convincingly. Why are the victims murdered in an overly gruesome, sexual way? Why the killer would be driven to such a thing is not believably shown in any aspect of his character. You are left with the feeling that the author is simply turning up the gore level to show how hard he's boiled. Similarly, Bradby pours on the profanity in his dialogue, which seems out of character with the era. I suppose it's possible that people in 1920's Shanghai used the word f*ck as casually as people do today but it doesn't seem likely. In contrast numerous sex scenes are timidly written, amounting to a dry hump amid all the explicit violence and graphic language. Seems to me if you really want to be hard-boiled you shouldn't be embarrassed to let it all hang out.

Yes, the book does a reasonably successful job of creating an intriguing backdrop of wretched excess and poverty. Bradby clearly has done his research. But knowing where the old racetrack was in relation to the Bund isn't the same thing as painting a compelling picture of what life was like in old Shanghai. Working within such a fertile setting for a thriller Bradby doesn't do a whole lot with it.

If anyone wants to read a fine, suspense-filled novel about Shanghai in the early 20th century you would be much better off picking up Andre Malraux's "Man's Fate".

Rating:
Summary: Sex killings in Shanghai
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Unconvincing thriller heavy on dramatic tension
Review: but weak in all other areas, especially lacking in any kind of credibility and poor in creating atmospherics despite the rich setting. In view of the adulatory press it has recieved tempting to conclude that it was another book the critics read, either that or it helps to work in the media if you want a good reception for badly written novels.

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

Rating:
Summary: What were these people reading?
Review: I had no more than forty pages left in this book at 8pm on the Friday evening before I was due to leave the next morning on a weeklong work-related trip. I didn't even bother to finish until I returned. Except for a compulsion to finish any book I had read 90% of, I could easily have closed it and never gone back to it. There are really only three things wrong with this book, but the three are scene, character development, and plot.
One would think 1920s Shanghai would make a fantastic background for any story, but it never seems real. I admit this criticism may be personal, but the city never came alive for me. Change the names and it could have been anywhere.
Characterization seems very weak. Field is the closest to a complete being and he comes up short. The characters all seem very modern in word and deed, especially Penelope. They all pretty much talk like Americans. The villain is given a weak and hackneyed motivation and the author does not prepare us at all for his identity. Don't misunderstand: I knew who it was, but only because the author had overplayed the other candidates and because it would have been this character in most television shows.
Often in a mystery, plot can redeem other flaws, but not here. Field goes here and there, back and forth, interviewing suspects and witnesses, but never really learns anything. There is much whirl, but no progress. Things just happen as if no one causes them, and there is never any real resolution, although there is a happy ending that seems tacked on.
There are many loose ends. Lewis tell Field that Natasha is "powerful," but I never learned what he meant. Why did the police know "The Cabal" existed and yet have a weak grasp on the members? This was a very frustrating and ultimately tiresome experience.

Rating:
Summary: Atmospheric thriller
Review: I really enjoy thrillers that take place in exotic locations, and in other eras. This excellent work does both, the action taking place in the foreign Concessions of Shainghai in 1926. We see a varied cast of characters, and the plot leaves the reader guessing as to the motives and loyalties of each one. The author successfully invokes the moral ambiguity of the period, and the tale moves along fairly swiftly. This is one book well worth reading, and I recommend it highly!

Rating:
Summary: Unconvincing thriller heavy on dramatic tension
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, which I understand is Mr. Bradby's first published in the US. In my opinion, he gets the feeling of the setting just right, the novel reads as if it were meticulously researched. But unlike so many writers of this genre, Bradby doesn't feel the need to prove his expertise by unloading reams of background information at the slightest literary provocation, and I for one am quite thankful of that.

Bradby's depiction of Shanghai in the mid 20's is of place of a million shades of grey, reeking of corruption and teeming with all manner of damaged souls. Even Bradby's wide-eyed protagonist, Richard Field, has his share of darkness in his past. But nothing in Field's past has prepared him for what awaits him in Shanghai. Field doesn't fit in there; he is constantly out of place in more ways than one. His black and white personal code is constantly challenged and tested by the numerous and perplexing shadings of right and wrong in the local moral system.

Bradby skillfully weaves his clues together, although perceptive readers may pick up on the clues to "whodunit" well before the dramatic climax. But even if you do think you have it figured out, you probably won't really be certain until all the cards are laid upon the table.

I look forward to Mr. Bradby's next offering, and may have to start digging to see if I can find any of his previous works published in the UK.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo, Mr. Bradby
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, which I understand is Mr. Bradby's first published in the US. In my opinion, he gets the feeling of the setting just right, the novel reads as if it were meticulously researched. But unlike so many writers of this genre, Bradby doesn't feel the need to prove his expertise by unloading reams of background information at the slightest literary provocation, and I for one am quite thankful of that.

Bradby's depiction of Shanghai in the mid 20's is of place of a million shades of grey, reeking of corruption and teeming with all manner of damaged souls. Even Bradby's wide-eyed protagonist, Richard Field, has his share of darkness in his past. But nothing in Field's past has prepared him for what awaits him in Shanghai. Field doesn't fit in there; he is constantly out of place in more ways than one. His black and white personal code is constantly challenged and tested by the numerous and perplexing shadings of right and wrong in the local moral system.

Bradby skillfully weaves his clues together, although perceptive readers may pick up on the clues to "whodunit" well before the dramatic climax. But even if you do think you have it figured out, you probably won't really be certain until all the cards are laid upon the table.

I look forward to Mr. Bradby's next offering, and may have to start digging to see if I can find any of his previous works published in the UK.

Rating:
Summary: Four hundred pages of unrelenting tension....
Review: I was totally caught up in "The Master of Rain." For hundreds of pages I shared with the young hero the confusion of literally not knowing what was going on, who if anyone could be trusted. I've read the publishers' reviews Amazon has posted, and know that they criticize the book for flawed/hackneyed writing in spots and for a failure to capture Shanghai's atmosphere in any detail. But for me, Tom Bradby did a fantastic job of capturing the atmosphere of the EXPATRIATE's Shanghai, quite a different matter, and sustaining an almost unbearable tension to the very last paragraph. This is one gripping book!!