Jews

Review: “Shanghai” Is a Great Wartime Thriller

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★★★★★

Like Alan Furst and C.S. Harris, Joseph Kanon has a remarkable gift for time travel. Open one of his novels and you’re immediately immersed in the sights and sounds of another era–and something even better: how people thought in that period, what they feared, and what they dreamed of.

That gift is on rich display in his new novel, Shanghai, set in 1939 when part of that city was basically a European-controlled enclave–or colony. Take your pick. It’s been the destination  for European refugees, many of them Jews, who have fled the Nazis and the inevitable war that will plunge Europe into complete and utter chaos. But while they may be safe in Shanghai in one way, there’s the threat of what Japan, which now controls vast swathes of China, might do if their army decides to seize the city. The “island” they cling to could sink at any moment.

Tension and fear permeate the book, infusing the staccato, jittery dialogue and a narrative that is filled with sentence fragments. Kanon has made those compelling stylistic choices to better plunge us into the lives of refugees who have nothing and now live in a chaotic and dangerous work of smuggling, drug dealing, gambling, prostitution, gangsters, and murder.

The hero is Daniel Lohr who’s escaped from Berlin thanks to a mobster uncle in Shanghai paying for his first-class passage from Trieste. As a writer,  Daniel has had no real involvement in anything illegal before, but he learns quickly what the “smart play” is in every situation when navigating the murk of Shanghai’s criminal night life and hyperactive underworld. 

Daniel’s deftness at negotiating comes perhaps too fast to be completely believable. Yes, he was in the nascent anti-Nazi resistance, but he never got a real foothold there before he had to flee from the Gestapo. Ironically, on board the ship from Trieste, he meets Colonel Yamada, a member of Japan’s version of the Gestapo, and their lives become balefully intertwined once they reach China.

Yamada is man whose every word, smile, nod, and glance seems like a move in three-dimensional chess. An on-board scene where he subtly spars with a Jewish table-mate is a chilling masterpiece of threatening understatement. 

As one high-ranking criminal in Shanghai puts it, however, “The Japanese are the war lords now. They want tribute [and they] really believe they’re a superior people.  So they underestimate everyone.” That of course includes Daniel who becomes more and more enmeshed in his uncle’s business.

One of Kanon’s other gifts is the ability to write about sex in a way that is not remotely mechanical: he doesn’t just move bodies around like erotic puppets but stays focused on what the characters are thinking and feeling. They’re people, not just an assemblage of parts. Here’s a brief sample from aboard the ship to Shanghai when Daniel sleeps with another penniless Jewish refugee, Leah:

“Afternoon sex was slower, exploring, running his hand over her skin as if they had all the time in the world.  Nights were like the first one, furtive, rushed, one ear cocked toward the hall, half expecting footsteps. Every night. The sex fed on itself, their last meal, greedy for crumbs. Again and again, the hunger part of some larger defiance, outrunning whatever was chasing them. You can’t get me. Not a romance, an escape.”

Shanghai is a short, lean novel, not remotely as dense and enveloping as Kanon’s Alibi set in post-WW II Venice, for instance, but it punches way above its weight with gripping characters and scenes, and an explosive finish made for a miniseries.

Lev Raphael is the former crime fiction reviewer for The Detroit Free Press and the author of nine mysteries and one thriller, along with seventeen other books in many genres.  Raphael has also reviewed books for The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Report and a handful of public radio stations in Michigan where he had his own interview show. His author guests included Salman Rushdie, Erica Jong, Julian Barnes, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

 

 

A Death in Denmark

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Danish Gabriel Præst is not your typical PI.  He’s intellectual, dandyish, and upscale.  He quotes Kierkegaard and Sartre, wears designer clothes, loves fine wine and good whiskey (though he’s also a beer aficionado).  His high-end coffee maker likely costs several thousand dollars and he’s fastidious in other ways, too: he’s been working for a decade on remodeling a townhouse he inherited.  Latest DIY problem? Locating more hard-to-find 17th-century Spanish tiles to finish the bathroom that already has a wildly expensive antique French claw-foot tub.

Præst’s main clients are corporate law firms in Copenhagen, and his brief is corporate theft, embezzlement, industrial espionage, corporate corruption, insurance fraud and that old PI standby, adultery.  The man’s personal life is intriguing.  He has a woman journalist friend-with-benefits, gets along amicably with the mother of his daughter, really likes her new husband, and even rents space in the husband’s law firm building.

Unlike most crime fiction–whether screen or book–his daughter in this book is not troubled, difficult or any other cliché of the genre.  In fact, she’s “morally sound, smart, self-aware and courageous.”

The story begins when Præst has been asked by an ex-lover to investigate the case of a Muslim Dane convicted of killing a right-wing politician.  He accepts the case because he’s still under the spell of this ex-.  She’s “the one who got away.”

In a classic genre scene, he’s warned off the investigation by a tough advisor to the Danish prime minister himself.  Of course nothing will stop Præst and every step of his investigation seems to expose right-wing bigotry against Muslims living in Denmark even if they were born there.  As the investigation unfolds, we learn that the victim was secretly working on a book about Denmark’s time under German occupation that might reveal a less-than-heroic role for some important Danes.

The characters are vividly described, the translation from Danish feels smooth and the story is compelling, though readers might feel the author overdoes Præst’s foodie lifestyle since it feels like he’s eating or drinking on almost every page.  And  awareness of his “white privilege” is practically a flag he waves as if he has to prove some kind of point.  A careful editor might have suggested a lighter touch, and did he need to be beaten up so often–and shot too?

However, the author does a good job of leavening this mystery with humor. There’s a constant joke that everyone refers to the mother of Præst’s child as his “ex-wife” when they were never married and it frustrates them.  And some of the best parts of the book are Præst’s sarcastic observations about the difficult weather in Denmark and complaints about people lacking style.  Readers who don’t find the food references overdone may feel like they’ve been given a welcome tour of cool places to eat and drink in Copenhagen.  As well as a style guide for men who want to look like what one character calls “a southern Swedish metrosexual.”

Lev Raphael has reviewed crime fiction for The Detroit Free Press and is the author of the Nick Hoffman mystery series.

 

“The Paris Showroom” Was Badly Edited

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This historical novel builds on fascinating, horrible facts. While plundering the belongings of deported or imprisoned Jews, rich and poor, the Nazis in Occupied Paris “processed” their goods in three locales, including the Lévitan department store. 

Anything valuable that officers, their wives or mistresses might want was displayed and the rest sent off to Germany, no matter how prosaic an item it was.  Damaged goods were repaired for the greater glory of the Reich and personal effects like letters and photos were burned.

The 800 prisoners forced to do this labor lived in appalling conditions and the author makes their plight very vivid, but that’s one of the book’s few strengths.

I really wanted to love The Paris Showroom because I’ve read hundreds of books over the years, fiction and nonfiction, about WWII, including books about France during the Occupation. 

But I couldn’t. The dialogue too often seems American and contemporary, with characters saying things like “Whatever” and “True that” and “Beats the heck out of me.”

Then there’s an apartment house concierge who sounds like a 2022 guru or life coach and far too wise.  Worse than that, one of the two main heroines seems unbelievably naive and uninformed: though she’s twenty-one, in 1944 she still doesn’t understand how or why the war started (!) or what the Occupation really means. Her questions can be unbelievably dim and it’s hard to root for someone so out of touch with reality.

Blackwell also gets some things wrong like the French name for The Phony War, that period from September 1939 and April 1940 when there was virtually no fighting on the Western Front.  How could she have missed something so basic?

Another error that’s hard to comprehend from a seasoned author: She says the Jews wore “golden stars.” Not remotely: it was a Yellow Star. I suspect professional historians might find even more problems than I did. 

Though she peppers the book with bits of French for atmosphere, Blackwell for some reason uses the English “huh?” rather than the French “hein?” which you’d get from context. And rather than use “bibelot” she employs the very popular American word from Yiddish “tchotchke”– but doesn’t quite get its meaning right either.  The book is filled with choices like this which you would expect a careful editor or copy editor would have caught.

While there’s a touching family reunion in The Paris Showroom, that and almost everything else in the book is often overshadowed by minute details about fan making.  Don’t ask.

Lev Raphael is the former crime fiction reviewer for the Detroit Free Press and author of 27 books in genres from memoir to mystery.  His work has been translated into 15 languages and he coaches, mentors, and edits writers at https://www.writewithoutborders.com.