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1930s: 1930s Shanghai could give Chicago a run for its money.
City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir
What you need to know before your trail
1930s Shanghai could give Chicago a run for its money. In the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world.
‘Lucky’ Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison in the States, spotted a craze for gambling and rose to become the Slot King of Shanghai.
They thought they ruled Shanghai; but the city had other ideas.
Travel Guide
Shanghai
For the full and VERY impressive tour by the author – Visit Authorsonlocation – Shanghai
By the 30s, Shanghai had grown from a walled fishing village into something else entirely.
The city was “a deafening babel of tongues, a hodgepodge of administrations, home to hopeful souls from several dozen nations joined together by one simple guiding ethos: money and the getting of it”
In 1940 the Kingpin Kings bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation and genocide.
Shanghai was their playground for a flickering few years, a city where for a fleeting moment even the wildest dreams seemed possible.
Because of the uncertainty in the world; Japanese forces were getting ever closer and the future of the foreign enclave and its inhabitants was seriously in doubt, there was a great deal of money to be made in drink, drugs, gambling and other vices. This is the story of that city.
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Booktrail Boarding Pass: City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir
Destination : Shanghai Author/Guide: Paul French Departure Time: 1930s
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