Shanghai, 1926. A city glistening with decadence and rife with corruption -- a humid, bustling society at the cultural crossroads of British civil servants, American gun runners, Russian princesses, and Chinese gangsters.
For Richard Field, a young Englishman new to the international police force, Shanghai represents a brave new world away from the past he is trying to escape. But his naïveté is quickly dashed when he is called to the scene of a brutal crime, in which a young Russian woman, Lena Orlov, has been found sadistically murdered in her bed. Field's idealistic instincts push him to investigate the case, but his attempts are met with apathy -- then menace -- from his colleagues. He begins to recognize that some cases in Shanghai are intended to remain unsolved, and, in a matter of days, he glimpses the murky depths that lurk beneath a luminous city.
Field's drive to find the murderer leads him to Lena's neighbor, Natasha Medvedev. A stunning beauty who fled her charmed life in tsarist Russia, Natasha escaped the Revolution but landed, like many of her counterparts, in a treacherous life in Shanghai. Natasha travels in an elite circle -- one that orbits, Field knows, around the city's most feared drug lord, Lu Huang. As his attraction to the beguiling Natasha grows, he is faced with a piercing question: can he trust someone whose only goal is self-preservation? And is it wise to fall in love with a woman who may herself be the next victim?
Trusting only his Chicago-hardened American partner, Caprisi, Field follows leads that run into the heart of a lawlessly corrupt city, slowly uncovering a web of deception that will leave him reeling.
In The Master of Rain, Tom Bradby weaves a taut, atmospheric crime novel that doles out surprising turns until the last suspenseful page.
"In this ambitious, atmospheric crime novel, a city on the brink is re-created with impressive diligence."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Bradby has done for Shanghai what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles."
TIME
"A great murder story."
ESQUIRE
"Should especially please fans of P.D. James and John le Carré."
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
"This is an immensely atmospheric, gripping detective story with just the right mixture of exoticism, violence and romance."
THE TIMES (LONDON)
"This well-conceived and -rendered novel is a brooding tale of lust, murder and corruption.... Just what you want in a thriller."
THE STAR TRIBUNE (MINNEAPOLIS)
"Tense and rather lush, expertly working the wonderful setting without overplaying the cultural clash: eerily well-suited to these parlous times."
KIRKUS REVIEWS
"As we turn the pages and stray deeper into Tom Bradby's decadent, strangely perfumed world, we grow aware that something sinister lies just beyond the reach of our vision, something we cannot see but that we nevertheless know is there. The Master of Rain is an astonishing, haunting, masterful novel."
LINCOLN CHILD, BESTSELLING COAUTHOR OF THE RELIC
"Beneath the surface of this clever book, a thrilling yarn of murder and mayhem, we find a wise, richly layere
