The Master Of Rain
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Every once in a while a book comes along that combines larger-than-life epic adventure; idiomatic, pungent historical detail and genuine storytelling panache. Tom Bradby’s The Master of Rain is such a book, carrying the reader headlong into a breathless tale of double-dealing and murder in 1920s Shanghai. What’s more, Bradby never allows his sprawling canvas to overwhelm his beleaguered characters who always remain in keen focus.
Richard Field, Bradby’s resourceful protagonist, has been seconded to the police force in the turbulent city of Shanghai. He finds a jostling mélange of British Imperial civil servants, American gunrunners and vicious Chinese gangsters. The grisly case he is landed with involves the mutilated body of a young White Russian woman and Field discovers that her neighbour, Natasha Medvedev, is somehow crucial to the investigation. But Natasha’s only agenda is self-preservation and Field finds himself unwisely falling in love with her. Can he crack the mystery before the next victim falls--particularly as the signs are that it is to be Natasha?
This is splendidly evocative writing from the author of the first-rate Shadow Dancer. Masterly in its depiction of a beautiful, dirty and corrupt city and a population in thrall to the imperatives of the market: human life, like everything else in Shanghai, has its price. Field is the perfect conduit for the reader through the glittering decay of the city and his relationships (both with the beguiling Natasha and the panoply of quirky, dangerous characters he encounters) are adroitly handled by Bradby. The book is nearly 500 pages long but the reader will find that it has the pace and compulsiveness of a short story. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
'A thrilling yarn of murder and mayhem... wise, richly layered and utterly convincing' - SIMON WINCHESTER
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Truly gripping story about a young special branch officer grappling with a series of gruesome murders of immigrant Russian women set in Shanghai in 1926. Not only does he have to solve the crimes but also come to terms with the city itself, it's corruption and poverty and general apathy towards the Russian victims. Brilliant!
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Brilliantly concieved and well written. Manages to conjure up a city,its time and its intrigue with assurance. The plot is gripping and the book truly unputdownable.
The novel captures the setting so well that you wonder why no one has written about Shanghai in the 20's before. Mind you it would be difficult to top this.
Buy it
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Whilst it is true that there are some aspects of plotting to strain the reader's credulity, I found it un-put-down-able. It's not even my kind of usual book, but was lent to me by my father, who spent a large amount of time in Shanghai in the '80s: he very much enjoyed the recreation of the city in the 20s, sleaze and degradation vying with allure. I had not appreciated how many dispossessed Russians ended up there, as opposed to Western European cities. Although the book does teeter on the brink, I felt that it captures the tragedy of their situation without descending too far into sentimentality or bathos. I wondered, however - how many more 'sins of the flesh' could Mr Bradby throw at the reader?? He runs the gamut from opium addiction and trafficking to paedophilia, via prostitution, adultery, bondage... I could go on...
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