Paul French (1) (1966–)

This Edgar Award-winning book is an utterly compelling and very disturbing account of the 1937 murder of Pamela Werner, set against the foreboding backdrop of Peking on the cusp of monumental change. Pamela's murder was particularly gruesome, and a tricky thing to investigate: she was an English girl, which required the involvement of the British legation, yet the crime was committed outside the Legation Quarter, which made it within Chinese jurisdiction. The diplomatic maneuvering made show more investigation very difficult, as did nationalistic face-saving on all sides. The interactions of so many groups of people in a relatively small area: legations of wealthy British, American, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch; along with Japanese military and the unease they brought (justifiably, considering the full-scale Japanese assault and occupation of China later that year); desperately impoverished and stateless White Russian exiled from Bolshevik Russia; and the nearby Badlands -- den of opium, heroin, prostitution and other vice -- made this an area of volatility and subterfuge. No one was what they seemed on the surface: not Pamela, not her father, not her friends, not the investigators, no one.

This is a great, if disturbing read. The depth of research is astonishing, yet the book reads like a thriller. The author's skill is impressive, but more impressive is the body of research collected at the time by one key player, especially given the condition and confusion of China in the late 1930s. This is fascinating true history. show less

Wow! This is a really fascinating, well-told story of a 20-year-old free spirit killed by the worst elements of a 30s Peking expat demimonde as WWII and Japanese invasion looms. Using discovered correspondence, the author is able to tell of the young woman's demise by intelligence gleaned by her adoptive father out-detecting the authorities during the occupation. With opium-taking rickshaw pullers, a hermaphrodite, brothels, rakes, nudists and a roué dentist this has all the makings of an show more exotic crime noir with the crushing tragedy of it being a true tragedy of Jack The Ripper-like murder happening to an unfortunate ingénue. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Paul French's Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin, 2012) is the darkest sort of crime story: the sort that actually happened. French reconstructs the brutal murder of 20-year-old Pamela Werner, whose mutilated body was found beneath Peking's Fox Tower in January 1937. Using newspaper accounts, police records, autopsy reports, and a large investigative file on the case compiled by Pamela's father, French brings this gruesome show more tale to light.

In "literary non-fiction" style, French recreates Pamela's last days, and provides background on her family, her neighborhood, and the foreign community in Peking during the last 1930s. He reconstructs the police investigation into her death, hampered as it was by "diplomatic" meddling, and, come to find out, severe police corruption and misconduct at several levels. It was left to Pamela's father to follow up leads and try to suss out what actually happened to his daughter, and his version of events has proven credible to French, who uses Werner's reports as the basis for his own narrative of Pamela's death.

A bit hard to read in parts, as French spares none of the gory details - this is decidedly not a book for the squeamish. But it's extremely well written, and a rather amazing story that certainly deserved to be told.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-review-midnight-in-peking.html show less