William Marshall’s Shanghai – a city of “men and women of quite the wrong type”

Somehow I had never heard of William Marshall’s 1979 novel Shanghai, climaxing in November 1941 (and starting in 1923) and featuring a cast of characters including an SMP cop, a disbarred American lawyer, an old China Hand and many others. It’s actually a pretty rollicking read and a bit of a page turner….

Marshall was an Australian best known for an interesting sounding series of Hong Kong set thrillers called the “Yellowthread Street” – apparently the BBC made a series of the books but I’m afraid I don’t know either the novels or the TV show. Shanghai is a bit of a mystery as it isn’t listed on Marshall’s Wikipedia page (unless it was published under another name in America – the copies below are UK editions).

And, if for nothing else, Shanghai is worth a read as it contains the immortal, and completely true then and now, statement:

“…the one great drawback to a city like Shanghai, with its many advantages, has been that its lack of basic discipline seems to have always attracted men and women of quite the wrong type.”