The Master of Rain

I started The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby a few weeks ago expecting a good noir-style mystery set in an exotic place. I got so much more. The Master of Rain does read like it could be filmed in black and white; it's filled with men in suits wearing fedoras and smoking, there's a beautiful woman with secrets and a hero feeling his way through treachery and intrigue, but at heart it's a dense historic novel.

It took me only a few pages in to realize how very little I knew about Shanghai in the 1920s. It was a big Chinese city, but at the centre lay an area controlled by American and British Commercial interests, called the International Settlement, bordered on one side by the French Settlement and surrounded by a China in turmoil as Mao's show more forces destabilize the country and leave plenty of room for criminal forces to take control of the Chinese parts of Shanghai. The city is also flooded with Russian refugees in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

Into this comes Field, a Yorkshireman hired as a policeman and assigned to the special forces, that is, to the political branch of the police. Immediately, he is called out, with an American cop, to the scene of a murder; a Russian woman found brutally slain in an apartment block owned by the Chinese mob boss who controls much of the city. And so begins a fast-paced and complex story that swings from the upper echelons of expat society to the desperate world of emigre Russians trying to survive in a hostile city. show less

Idealism meets pragmatism in Bradby's literate historical mystery, and the confrontation ends in a tie. Richard Field, an ambitious and idealistic newly-minted officer appointed to the international police in Shanghai in 1926, has to battle both the demons of his past and barely suppressed anger at the wrongs in the world to help find the sadistic killer of a young Russian woman working as a prostitute.

Shanghai is supposedly controlled by international colonizing forces, but it's a Chinese warlord who really holds the power, through opium, bribes, and prostitution in a city where corruption is the norm, communism is encroaching, and nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. When Field falls for the victim's friend, a Russian show more woman in as much peril as the dead girl, he's drawn deeper and deeper into a maelstrom of lies and deceit. A serial killer seems to be working in the city, someone who likely is being protected by the warlord, if not the warlord, himself.

Bradby has researched his subject (I now want to know more about the time period in China -- my history classes are too far in the past!) and writes in a flowing, literary style that really pulled me in and made me feel as if I were there, across the globe, all those years ago. I hope to read more by this author; I already have his The White Russian here waiting for me. show less

Into the impenetrable and multi-layered society of 1926 Shanghai comes a newly employed and incorruptible police officer, Michael Field. British, like many of the Shanghai police, he shares the same hopes as many émigrés - to rebuild his life in a distant land. Unlike most, he wants to rebuild his life pure and clean. But he finds himself immediately plunged into a whirlpool of conflict: police officers who vie with each other more than with criminals; rich, untouchable businessmen; all-powerful Chinese gangsters; impoverished Russian princesses (there's more than one!) who are now reduced to smuggling and prostitution.
Investigating the sickening murder of one such prostitute, Field falls for another - the ravishing six foot tall show more Natasha Medvedev. But is she a prostitute? Is she in peril? Could she be a villain? As Field threshes in the Chinese maelstrom he can trust no one, understand little and resolve even less. But he is an honourable man, perhaps the only one in Shanghai. Against vast opposition what difference can he make?
In the long run I struggled to finish this. It was recommended on the 4MA list as evocative of another culture but by the end I was finding the plotting too convoluted, to long-winded, and the book literally too heavy (550 pages in hard-back, big print). show less

Good atmosphere, competent plot. Everything proceeds a little bit too much as expected, but this is a first book, and the writing is good

I did not like this book. I wanted to know what would happen so I kept reading, but I might as well have skipped to the end and put myself out of my misery. The quality of the writing was poor (especially the dialogue) and the storyline disappointing.

British police officer investigates murder of a Russian prostitute while falling in love with another. Chinese gangsters.