Shanghai: a port of last refuge

The Prize-winning author of True crime Midnight in Peking, in his new book City of Devils, portrays Shanghai through its historical criminals a bunch of rascals.

He does not write memoirs of ambassadors, businessmen and missionaries, and in the City of Devils, French’s heroes are the low-life foreigners who came to the city when it was the port of the last refuge for the world’s outcasts in the 1930s.

“Lucky” Jack Riley, an ex-US Navy boxing champion who escaped from an American prison to claim the title of “Slots King of Shanghai”, is one of the pairs of lead characters and among others is “Dapper Joe” a Viennese Jew, Carlos Garcia the distiller and importer of Mexican Tequila into Shanghai and Flo Ziegfeld-wannabe associated with his chorus lines and casino.

This is the story of how the low-life rose to power and their eventual downfall, and the trail of destruction they left in their wake.

It is also the story of how the Old Shanghai, ran itself down into the half-century of obscurity that follows under communism.

Paul French takes us through the tearsheets from local shopping news and highlights the adverts for the “crochet Turbans that all smart women are wearing this season”, for England loveliest perfume” ( Potter & Moore’s Mitcham Lavender), Zenith shortwave radio.

In 1930s Shanghai was no lagging behind Chicago and in the years before the Japanese invaded the city was a haven for outlaws a from all over the world where fascism and communism outrun fortunes made and lost.

City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir by Paul French, Riverrun £16.99/ Picador $28, 288 pages