A review of ‘The Shanghai Circle’ by a member of the Online Book Club on the 31st of May 2024
5 out of 5 stars
Henderson seamlessly weaves fact and fiction together to create an epic novel set in one of the largest and brightest cities in the world. Joseph Cheung, the main character, is full of ambition and aspiration. Being the son of the patriarch of the Sung Triad Society, Cheung Pak Ho, Joseph’s mission is to bring the Sung Triad Society into modernization and smooth the transformation process; nevertheless, various people would like to retain the wealth and power that they had passed down for centuries. Joseph’s struggles go back and forth day after day, but he never stops. He is trapped in a fierce business war, an extended journey of “modernization,” and a paradoxical relationship between the past and the present.
Cheung Pak-ho is a force of nature: the kind of man who walks into a room and commands respect, who carries himself with such confidence that it’s hard not to want to know more about him. Heiza should know. His section of Old Town is, after Joseph’s, the most dangerous. His men move their homemade stingers from Kowloon’s main road to the New Territories every few days to prevent the police from getting wise to their operation.Mysterious and fiercely loyal, Tong-feng is a force unto himself. Everybody knows he’s Joseph’s right-hand man, the enforcer they roll out when they need someone to disappear. What few know is why. He is, as Joe will say, the smartest, bravest, and most dedicated man I’ve ever met.
Tong-feng compliments him perfectly in the way he works, in his attention to detail, in the way he sweeps an executing hand over his plans, and in motioning to Joseph the way a magician might offer an audience a deck of cards. And so Joe endures him. An element of the novel that is especially gripping is the incredible portrayal of the Green Gang, a dark group of characters led by the wickedly evil and brilliantly colorful Du Yueh-sheng.
It is through this wonderful representation of the gang that Henderson explores how politics, crime, and law enforcement all came together in the early part of the century in Shanghai, the amazing crime capital of the world at the time. Shanghai’s experiences really are unique; it’s the only place you have this kind of overlap in a city. Further, and then there’s these Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong threatening to come out of the hills any day now, to add incredible tension to his narrative. An important observation to make about “The Shanghai Circle” is the thematic depth.
Henderson explores, quite profoundly, the themes of power, corruption, and survival and at the same time crafts a morally ambivalent city; intricate family clashes and spur of the moment eyebrow movements are the be all, end all of people’s destinies. The clash between Joseph’s hope to merge the two separate hemispheres of Shanghai and the pure resistance to any change from traditionalists is (as Carver would write, “what it’s all about, absolutely”) eerily and terrifyingly similar to today’s society battling between furiously entrenched conservatives and wave upon wave of the future.
In conclusion, The luminous character work and painstaking historical detailing make this a must-read for fans of the genre and anyone curious about the twisted and deadly world of Shanghai in the 1930s. I did not face any grammatical fault, and the editing is fantastic, which really enhances the book!