The Master Of Rain

The Master Of Rain

Summary

Shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Thriller of the Year

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 a brave new world away from the past he is trying to escape. Seconded to the police force, his first moment of active duty is a brutal crime scene. A young White Russian woman, Lena Orlov, lies spreadeagled on her bed, sadistically murdered. As he begins to peer through the glittering surface to the murky depths beneath, 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.

The key to the investigation seems to be Lena's neighbour, Natasha Medvedev. But can Field trust someone for whom self-preservation is the only goal? And is it wise to fall in love when there is every sign that Natasha herself may be the next victim?

In a city where reality is a dangerous luxury, Field is driven into the darkness beyond the dazzle of society to a world where the basest of human needs are met and where the truth seems certain to be a fatal commodity . . .
_____

Praise for Tom Bradby:

Quite exceptional’ Daily Telegraph
‘Nigh on impossible to put down’ Time Out
‘Bradby has the talent of a reporter but the heart of a storyteller’ Daily Mail
‘Intrigue of the highest order … Atmospheric and richly entertaining’ Washington Post
‘This feisty, pacey thriller by TV news reporter turned writer Tom Bradby has it all’ Press Association

Reviews

  • 'A moody, murder mystery with all the style of a noir classic'
    The Mirror

About the author

Tom Bradby

TOM BRADBY is a novelist, screenwriter and journalist. He has written nine previous novels, including top-ten bestselling Secret Service, and its two sequels, Double Agent and Triple Cross. The Master of Rain was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger for Thriller of the Year, and both The White Russian and The God of Chaos for the CWA Historical Crime Novel of the Year. He adapted his first novel, Shadow Dancer, into a film, the script for which was nominated for Screenplay of the Year in the Evening Standard Film Awards.

As a broadcaster, he is best known as the current Anchor of ITV's News at Ten. In his first year in the job he was named Network Presenter of the Year by the Royal Television Society. He has been with ITN for thirty years and was successively Ireland Correspondent, Political Correspondent, Asia Correspondent (during which time he was shot and seriously injured whilst Covering a riot in Jakarta), Royal Correspondent, UK Editor and Political Editor- a job he held for a decade - before being made the Anchor of News at Ten in 2015.
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