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dasbooch's review against another edition
4.0
Paul French writes an intriguing quasi history/historical novel that illustrates the wild nature of pre-World War II Shanghai through the lives of Dapper Joe and Lucky Jack. While he takes some liberty with the historical sources, it is somewhat forgivable since French admits it in the Preface. The lives of the two protagonists are brought brilliantly to life and shine a light into the chaos of criminal Shanghai. However, French often fails to bring rich personalities to most of the other characters in the book and sometimes his illustration of Shanghai in this period falls short. Overall it is an enjoyable read that could encourage further research into this fascinating period of the city.
mwgerard's review against another edition
4.0
Paul French brings another true crime story in 1930s China to life. In this book, he focuses on the underbelly of Shanghai concessions in the mid-1930s. With the city divided up into numerous quarters, each with their own laws and tolerance of criminal enterprise.
The International Settlement governed itself—not a colony like Hong Kong or Singapore, but a treaty port, a place of trade and enrichment for the conquerors. … The Settlement represented fourteen foreign powers—Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States—who had extracted treaty port rights from a weak and teetering Qing Dynasty China. Each had its own consulate and courts within the Settlement, for within the Settlement a foreigner was not subject to Chinese justice but only to that of his or her own nation.
Jack Riley, an American ne’er-do-well, managed to escape the prison system and get to Shanghai, where he blended into the crooked shanty alleyways and cellars. He realized the potential in slot machines and built an empire across the concessions. Not satisfied with owning the market on “one-armed bandits,” Riley also smuggled contraband inside the guts of these mechanical monsters.
At the same time, Joe Farran quite literally danced his way out of a ghetto in Austria as the Nazis were rising to power. Shanghai didn’t care that he was Jewish — he and his partner had the best chorus girl show in town. He made a fortune under the hot stage lights, sweltering in the stuffy city and opened his own club.
Joe and Jack ran in the same circles, drank in the same clubs, lost money on the same races. And in the last fading years — between the invasion of Japan and the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two teamed up to create what they thought was an impermeable fortress of gambling, crime and nightlife.
[The Japanese] avoided attacking the foreign concession, not yet wanting war with the European powers and America. … The International Settlement and the French Concession became the ‘Solitary Island’ … While the phosphorous flames of the fox demons of war swirled through the burnt-out streets and devastated quarters of the Chinese portions of the city, the Japanese entered the house and took everything.
While his earlier book, Midnight in Peking, was a murder mystery, City of Devils is more of a hard-boiled crime story. It is less of a whodunit and more of a watchhowtheydidit. Though it is nonfiction, he often writes as though it is a noir detective novel. It can take a few pages to get used to this style but it works. And French manages to sustain it effectively throughout.
This is a sparkling history of a brief time in a No Man’s Land, and the bright people who burned fiercely, and all too quickly.
https://mwgerard.com/accent-city-of-devils/
The International Settlement governed itself—not a colony like Hong Kong or Singapore, but a treaty port, a place of trade and enrichment for the conquerors. … The Settlement represented fourteen foreign powers—Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States—who had extracted treaty port rights from a weak and teetering Qing Dynasty China. Each had its own consulate and courts within the Settlement, for within the Settlement a foreigner was not subject to Chinese justice but only to that of his or her own nation.
Jack Riley, an American ne’er-do-well, managed to escape the prison system and get to Shanghai, where he blended into the crooked shanty alleyways and cellars. He realized the potential in slot machines and built an empire across the concessions. Not satisfied with owning the market on “one-armed bandits,” Riley also smuggled contraband inside the guts of these mechanical monsters.
At the same time, Joe Farran quite literally danced his way out of a ghetto in Austria as the Nazis were rising to power. Shanghai didn’t care that he was Jewish — he and his partner had the best chorus girl show in town. He made a fortune under the hot stage lights, sweltering in the stuffy city and opened his own club.
Joe and Jack ran in the same circles, drank in the same clubs, lost money on the same races. And in the last fading years — between the invasion of Japan and the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two teamed up to create what they thought was an impermeable fortress of gambling, crime and nightlife.
[The Japanese] avoided attacking the foreign concession, not yet wanting war with the European powers and America. … The International Settlement and the French Concession became the ‘Solitary Island’ … While the phosphorous flames of the fox demons of war swirled through the burnt-out streets and devastated quarters of the Chinese portions of the city, the Japanese entered the house and took everything.
While his earlier book, Midnight in Peking, was a murder mystery, City of Devils is more of a hard-boiled crime story. It is less of a whodunit and more of a watchhowtheydidit. Though it is nonfiction, he often writes as though it is a noir detective novel. It can take a few pages to get used to this style but it works. And French manages to sustain it effectively throughout.
This is a sparkling history of a brief time in a No Man’s Land, and the bright people who burned fiercely, and all too quickly.
https://mwgerard.com/accent-city-of-devils/
paul_cornelius's review against another edition
4.0
Everything I ever imagined about Shanghai and its International Settlement between World War I and II ends up being insufficient. Its wild chaotic nightlife, vast underworld empire, fear of encroaching Japanese encirclement, all the stories of drugs, murders, gambling, and vague national allegiances, all that is true. And more. At least it is if you believe Paul French's history of the city during the interwar years, as seen through the eyes of two gangsters, Jack Riley and Joe Farren. The former a rogue American naval veteran and the latter a Viennese Jew made refugee from Hitler and the Nazis.
And I do believe French has provided an accurate glimpse of Shanghai for those years. His history is idiosyncratic. It's told mostly through the present and present perfect tenses. There are no notes or citations. And he often employs the argot and slang of American gangsters and the Yiddish of New York Jewish mafioso of the period. (He does spoil this effect, however, in importing a term belonging to British slang, punter, to describe the customers, bettors, highrollers, marks, and dicers of the various Shanghai criminal enterprises. No self respecting American gangster of those years would ever use that word.) Taking on the attributes of a novel at times, I tend to think of City of Devils almost as more of a recreation or reenactment than the usual weighty tome to be expected of an academic historian.
Another novelty of French's approach is that in tracing the rise and fall of the two gangsters is that we see events through the eyes of those living on the edge, a sort of lumpen history. It's a world of hitmen, prostitutes, drug pushers, gun runners, smugglers, and blackmailers. And darned if you don't come off sympathizing with them more than with the colonial legal authorities who want to put them behind bars. It's a fantastic world, this Shanghai or the Twenties and Thirties, and the noose that had been strangling it since 1937, when the Japanese first began to move around the edges, finally tightens and chokes it to death after Pearl Harbor and December 7, 1941.
And I do believe French has provided an accurate glimpse of Shanghai for those years. His history is idiosyncratic. It's told mostly through the present and present perfect tenses. There are no notes or citations. And he often employs the argot and slang of American gangsters and the Yiddish of New York Jewish mafioso of the period. (He does spoil this effect, however, in importing a term belonging to British slang, punter, to describe the customers, bettors, highrollers, marks, and dicers of the various Shanghai criminal enterprises. No self respecting American gangster of those years would ever use that word.) Taking on the attributes of a novel at times, I tend to think of City of Devils almost as more of a recreation or reenactment than the usual weighty tome to be expected of an academic historian.
Another novelty of French's approach is that in tracing the rise and fall of the two gangsters is that we see events through the eyes of those living on the edge, a sort of lumpen history. It's a world of hitmen, prostitutes, drug pushers, gun runners, smugglers, and blackmailers. And darned if you don't come off sympathizing with them more than with the colonial legal authorities who want to put them behind bars. It's a fantastic world, this Shanghai or the Twenties and Thirties, and the noose that had been strangling it since 1937, when the Japanese first began to move around the edges, finally tightens and chokes it to death after Pearl Harbor and December 7, 1941.
paulataua's review against another edition
4.0
Paul French charts the rise and fall of Jack Riley and Joe Farren in the wild and seedy Shanghai in the 1930’s and 40s. It’s a world with little law and order, where passports can be bought, where drugs are freely available, and where one can make one’s fortune by running nightclubs and gambling joints while paying off the authorities. The story is woven around meticulously researched fact and being fascinated by this part of the world in those times, it really pulled me in. I don’t understand why I am happy to feel safe in the modern world with its bureaucracy and order, yet so fascinated in the those almost lawless times. A good read and a superb look at the Shanghai of that period. A great read for anyone, but especially for those who have spent a lot of time out in this region over the years.
wolfpack75's review against another edition
2.0
The story of Jack Riley and Joe Farren told in this book is fairly simple and could be told in a relatively short manner but the author decided to add filler about the people, era, and the city of Shanghai. As a fan of history, I would have liked it if the book was more of a serious telling of the history instead of an unverifiable rapid-fire listing of happenings and people. It reads like the yellow journalism of the era it is set in and feels like it was written as more of a movie idea than a piece of serious history. Anyone who is a big fan of history will struggle to take this book more seriously because of the lack of a bibliography or detailed sourcing and at least one obvious error (Bo Diddley was not in Shanghai entertaining anyone in the 1920's).
myeonghopabo's review
just choose between a narrative story or a non-fiction flatlay rather than settling for a sparknotes summary of reality