James Hadley Chase’s A Coffin From Hong Kong, 1962

Chase was a British author that, starting just before World War Two, began publishing pulp novels in the American hard-bitten style a la Hammett, Chandler and Cain. George Orwell thought him coldhearted and a worrying sign of both creeping Americanism and the commecialisation of crime in his 1944 essay Raffles and Miss Blandish. China Rhymers though with a taste for pulp crime novels might find his 1962 novel A Coffin from Hong Kong fun – it begins and ends in Pasadena but the bulk of the novel is set in late 1950s Hong Kong. And quite a good description of the city it is too – seedy hotels, Wan Chai bars, 3-class ferries, neon-lit Kowloon, refugees from Red China sleeping on the street corners, the old Repulse Bay Hotel and Lantau Island back in the day. There’s also a trip to Kowloon Walled City, some grizzled old Scottish colonial cops, landing at Kai Tak and a few good dinners along the way. All-in-all a pretty good speed read. Don’t let the covers put you off!!