City of Devils

By Paul French,

Book cover of City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir

Book description

'Shanghai's champion storyteller - He grips his reader to the end' Economist
'Gripping, breakneck ultra-noir reminiscent of vintage Ellroy' David Peace, author of Red or Dead
'If you love Richard Lloyd Parry and David Grann, don't miss City of Devils' Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me

1930s Shanghai was a…

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Why read it?

1 author picked City of Devils as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I loved the way French, who won the Edgar Award and the CWA Gold Dagger for earlier books, painted a vivid picture of the Shanghai scene in the 1930s:  the rich, the lowlifes, the gangsters, and schemers that gave the city the reputation it had. 

Fast-paced and action-packed, this non-fiction work combined crime narrative and social history and took me to a time and place that is no more—one that I wished I had experienced firsthand.  

From Martin's list on life in Shanghai in Sino-Japanese War.

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