Used
Paperback
2002
$3.29
The brilliant new thriller from the acclaimed author of Shadow Dancer and The Sleep of the Dead. In a world where the basest of human needs are met, truth seems certain to be a fatal commodity. Shanghai, 1926: a city of British Imperial civil servants, American gun-runners, Russian princesses and Chinese gangsters, where heroin is available on room service and everything is for sale. Exotic, sexually liberated and pulsing with life, it is a place and time where anything seems possible. For Richard Field, it represents an escape from his past. Seconded to the police force, his first moment of active duty is at a brutal crime scene. A young White Russian woman, Lena Orlov, lies on her bed, sadistically murdered. The key to the investigation seems to be the beautiful Natasha Medvedev, but can she be trusted and is it safe to fall in love with a woman who may be the next victim? Beneath the murky depths of Shanghai, Field sees a world beyond the glamour of the city s expatriate life a world where everything has its price, and where human life is merely another asset to barter.