500 words from...is a series of
guest posts from authors writing about Asia, or published by Asia-based, or
Asia-focused, publishing houses, in which they talk about their latest books.
Here MJ Lee, a Briton who has lived in London, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore,
Bangkok and Shanghai, and who now splits his time between the UK and Asia,
talks about his Inspector Danilov series. These crime novels, set in the Shanghai of the
1920s and 1930s, feature as the sleuths Inspector Pyotr Danilov, a Russian, and
his half-Scottish half-Chinese sidekick, Detective Sergeant Strachan. Martin
chose to set his novels in Shanghai, between the two world wars, because it was
in his opinion, the perfect location for any murder - a city of shadows, where
death, decadence and debauchery stalked the art deco streets.
I remember very clearly when the
idea for writing a novel set in the Shanghai of the 1920s and 1930s came to
me. I was out strolling the city one
evening. It was around dusk in October, one of the best times of the year in Shanghai.
Perfect walking weather. I reached the crossroads at Jiangxi Middle Road and
Fuzhou Road, just opposite the Metropole Hotel. For a moment, there was no
traffic and no people, a strange occurrence in the city. I was suddenly
transported back to the 1920s, imagining old Dodges, Packards and Chevrolets
rolling up to the hotel, discharging carloads of flappers and elegant men
wearing tuxedos. A lovely moment, trapped in time.
The period between the wars was
an amazing time in Shanghai. The city of ‘joy, gin and jazz’ was an amazing
melting pot of adventurers, spies, triad members, opium smugglers, merchants, con-men,
communists, criminals, fascists, Japanese militarists, gamblers and refugees.
With such a witches’ cauldron of deceit and double-dealing, happiness and
despair, wealth and poverty, it soon became obvious that only a crime novel,
with its strong moral compass, could explore the depths of the abyss that was
Shanghai. And so the books were born.
The two main characters, Detective
Inspector Danilov and Detective Sergeant Strachan, are both outsiders, in a
society full of outsiders. They are employed by the Shanghai Municipal Police
but distanced from the rest of their colleagues, and from the society of the
time. Mavericks are always so much more interesting to read about and to write.
The choice of Danilov as the lead in the books actually came from a line in a
policeman’s memoir of the time. He mentioned that when they had a problem, both
the French and Shanghai police turned to White Russian members of their forces
to solve it for them.
Two books in the series have been
published so far, Death in Shanghai and City of Shadows, with a third on the
way in October this year. Given the wonderful cesspit of characters who lived
in Shanghai, the original ‘Pearl of the Orient’ there’s no shortage of wonderful
material for the future.
Details: The Danilov series is published by Carina, an imprint of
Harper Collins, in eBook, priced in local currencies.
This post submitted by Siobahn Daiko.
