Last Emperor Revisited – Basil Pao (Hong Kong University Press) – set photos frokm the classic film.
Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective (Prestel) – tie-in with the London Photographer’s Gallery exhibition this year.
Tokyo Jazz Joints – Philip Arneill (Kehrer Verlag) – lovely images of those charming little bars of the Japanese capital.
Japan on a Glass Plate: The Adventure of Photography in Yokohama and Beyond, 1853–1912 – Sebastian Dobson (Ludion) – a fantastic study of early photography in the Yokohama treaty port.
Watch With Wonder – Palani Mohan – (Hong Kong University Press) – incredible images from Nepal to Mongolia, Hong Kong Varanasi
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
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….
