All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Interesting perhaps that even as the Hong Kong authorities continue their philistine (& i think unpopular) war against the city’s neon the longest article i’ve seen generally offering an alternative was bizarrely in last Friday’s China Daily
My favourites – in no particular order….
The Detective up Late (Sean Duffy #7) – Adrian Mckinty (Blackstone) – brilliant supposed final chapter in the Duffy series sees our hero awake blurrily into 1980s Ulster.
The Last King of California – Jordan Harper (Simon & Schuster) – a fever dream of a wild ride into the world of meth-fuelled minor crims in Nowhere, California
Heat 2 – Michael Mann & Meg Gardiner (HarperCollins) – rewatch the movie first then read Heat 2, a terrific prequal and a sequel.
The Enchanters – James Ellroy (Penguin) – dare we say Ellroy back on form trashing celeb culture, back in the alt-history of old LA and muckraking US history.
Independence Square (Arkady Renko #10) – Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster) – time moves on though Renko ages slowly but finely like good Georgian brandy. This time Renko heads to Ukraine and finds Putin pulling dangerous strings.
City of Dreams – Don Winslow (HarperCollins) – Book #2 in the Danny Ryan doesn’t kick like the first (City on Fire) largely due to moving out of Providence. The final part of the trilogy is out in 2024 so we’ll see if it ultimately rivals his masterful Cartel trio.
Age of Vice – Deepti Kapoor (Fleet) – a big sprawling wonder of a book that trawls through the underbelly of Indian crime and corruption.
The Secret Hours – Mick Herron (Baskerville) – Sorry, but I’m not a fan of the Slow Horses books but Herron’s standalones are invariably great, and this is one of them.
Code of the Hills (Mick Hardin #3) – Chris Offutt (No Exit Press) – Offutt is consistently a force to be reckoned with in Grit Noir and the Mick Hardin series is consistently quality.
The Murders of Moises Ville – Javier Sinay (Restless Books) – the only true crime on the list and a fascinating one from Argentina, where Sinay is a prolific true crime writer.
Paradise (DS Walker #2) – Patricia Wolf (Embla Books) – the bets new procedural series to come along in a while. Ranging from the Outback to the Gold Coast, bikie gangs and all manner of Australian crims.
All the Sinners Bleed – SA Cosby (Headline) – Cosby remains on a tear…
The Second Murderer – Denise Mina (Harvill Secker) – the best of the Marlowe reboots so far. Mina is totally pitch perfect as an heir to Chandler.
Malibu Burning (Sharpe & Walker #1) – Lee Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer) – Another good new series, fire investigators in Cali. Goldberg is good at the page turning thing.
The Wheel of Doll (Happy Doll #2) – Jonathan Ames (Pushkin Vertigo) – nice fast paced thrillers in contemporary LA that keep you page turning.
Needless Alley – Natalie Marlow (Baskerville) – 1930s Birmingham (with not a Peaky Blinder in sight) with dollops of sleaze, murder and period feel. A first novel and an author to watch.
The Lock Up (Quirke #9) – John Banville (Hanover Square Press) – Quirke steps back up after the last couple of somewhat lacklustre outings. Back to 1950s Dublin.
Moscow Exile (Joe Wilderness #9) – John Lawton (Grove Press) – Lawton’s mash up of real and fictional espionage continues the British obsession with the Cambridge spies.
The Darker the Night – Martin Patience (Polygon) – a good solid first outing for Patience in a twisty tale set around the Scottish Independence referendum.
The Partisan – Patrick Worrall (Bantam) – impressive first book from Worrall with a multi-track tale ranging from Moscow to London to Lithuania and elsewhere of the fall outs from the Holocaust and the Cold War. A new spy writer to watch.
From last years South China Weekend Post weekend magazine – Christmas Eve 1929 & Shanghai Municipal Police DCI John Creighton finds himself investigating a murder on the Shanghai Express stranded in a snowdrift….
Heads Up – This weekends South China Morning Post magazine Christmas edition sees DCI Creighton return – it’s a year later, a snowy Christmas Eve 1930, & he stumbles on a murder at a party in one of Shanghai’s smartest art-deco apartment buildings…. check out scmp.com this coming weekend
I posted recently on the Hong Kong portrait painter Yat On, who was based on Wyndham Street (here).
Here is a portrait of Royal Navy sailor H G S Waymark. The portrait is signed by Yat On in Hong Kong but not dated. However, we do know that Waymark served in World War One and was awarded the the 1914–15 Star which was awarded in all the theatres of the conflict. Anyway, I’m going to say this portrait is circa 1920.
(an update – my thanks to Brian Palmer for confirming that H.G.S. Waymark’s service record shows that he served at H.M.S Tamar, a Royal Navy shore base on Hong Kong island between 24.7.20 to 31.8.20 confirming the date of the portrait.)
Anatol M. Kotenev’s New Lamps for Old: An Interpretation of Events in Modern China and Wither they Lead – this is a first edition in original cloth published by the North-China Daily News and Herald, Shanghai, 1931.
A few years ago I wrote a Long Read for the South China Morning Post weekend magazine on the awful typhoon of September 2, 1937 that led to much loss of life and property, caused fires, floods, and epidemics. You can read that article here.
But I just saw a great poster titled ‘Typhoon’s Toll’ and detailing the tragedy of 1937….
A medal awarded to James Haines of the Royal Marines for service in the First Opium War (1839-1842)… A full on imperialist bit of Latin round the top – Armis Exposcere Pacem (They Demanded Peace by Force of Arms)…
Storm Over Lisbon (1944) is not a great film, but it is perhaps worth an hour and a half of a wet Wednesday afternoon – it’s here on Youtube). It’s one of a number of films that worked the same turf as Casablanca a couple of years previously but with the script, the stars or the magic. Storm Over Lisbon is a rather lacklustre tale of spying in the capital, a rather elaborate casino in Estoril and Americans mixed up in espionage. It does have Erich Von Stroheim, who was always keen to make anti-Nazi movies (though this is technically about Japanese spies in Portugal), but not much else. The director, George Sherman, was more about quantity than quality, Richard Arlen’s glory days were fifteen years behind him, Robert Livingtston does a sort of sub-par Cary Grant jolity and Vera Ralston (a Czech figure skater that moved to Hollywood) never quite managed the glamour of a Garbo or a Dietrich.
Still, there is an interesting sub plot that involves Shanghai. Everyone is chasing the Richard Arlen character who has been in China and then a Japanese POW camp in Burma. He’s escaped with some film that’s very important (a Hitchcockian MacGuffin). Throughout his time in pre-war Shanghai is referenced, indicating he is an exciting man of adventure. His friend, played by Livingston, is a clipper pilot, the Pan Am long-range flying boat. Now he’s piloting the lifeline from Lisbon to New York, via Bermuda. But previously he flew the New York-Shanghai route (which was advertised and trialed but never really got going). A nice nod to a now lost charmign form of travel and the notion of Shanghai prefiguring Lisbon as a nest of spies….
