M. J. Lee's Death in Shanghai is unabashedly lurid and definitely gripping.

It is obviously based on considerable research, and according to one commentator, the book "truly brings old Shanghai to life".

But -- perhaps because of the larger-than-life story -- I have to say I didn't really "feel" old Shanghai in these pages.

The pieces are there. It's the 1920s. The lead character, Inspector Danilov -- a classic troubled detective -- has been caught up in the great Russian convulsion, and is tragically separated from his family; Strachan, his sidekick, gives us some insight into the life of the Eurasian; the murderer's identity is covered up because he's part of the ruling class; and opium and Russian prostitutes provide the classic Shanghai backdrop.

But, for me, this book lost out to two others I read immediately afterwards. One was Paul French's Midnight in Peking. This is a reconstruction of a true story. But it's a total page-turner, beautifully paced and evocatively written. Here, the sense of place is overwhelming. Beijing's Legation Quarter, the Badlands, and the Fox Tower just leap out of the story.

There's only one murder, but it's a singularly gruesome one, and the account shares with Lee's story a shocking colonial predisposition to cover up the truth. You can't but admire the tenacity of the victim's father as -- against a backdrop of ostracization, dissimulation, occupation, disorder, war, and detention -- he doggedly carries on fighting for justice for his child.



The other detective story that hogged the limelight for me this summer was Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X. Initially, this is the very opposite of lurid. It's creepily quotidian. The murder is set against an understated background of Japanese social commentary: the newly homeless, the nightclub, the bento box shop, the one-parent family, the private students who must not fail. The tone is somehow very Japanese -- meticulous, and low-key. But the climax is quite chilling.

The psychology generally feels very right, with the one exception of the physics professor who helps the police. He reminds me of the character in the American series Numbers, and is for me slightly implausible.

But otherwise, as Kidd observes, the novel is "not simply an extraordinary thriller but a love story. A strange one, it is true, but a love story nonetheless. It will linger long in the memory."