DEATH IN THE FLOWERY KINGDOM — Steven M. Roth

SHANGHAI, 1935. The Most Alluring and Most Dangerous City in the World

Someone is murdering flower-seller girls in Shanghai's Flowery Kingdom. And it is police Inspector-Detective Sun-jin's job -- his obsession, in fact -- to track down the killer and to arrest him, all at great peril to himself and to the people he loves.

Sun-jin, as he investigates the murders and deals with his complicated personal life, takes us though the contrasting worlds of East and West in Shanghai -- down the city's dark alleys and streets, through its gritty, crime-infested, triad-controlled underworld, but also into the plush private clubs of its British expatriates and bureaucrats, into the world of popular nightclubs, jazz bands, taxi dancers, and gambling dens, where money and greed thrive, human life means little, and cultures and politics often collide.

Through Sun-jin's eyes, as he investigates the murders, we see the best and the worst of this pleasure-mad, rapacious, corrupt, strife-ridden, licentious, highly cultured, enticing, and most decadent city in the world, in 1935.