THE SHANGHAI MURDERS

When the corpse of New Orleans cop Richard Fallon is discovered in an alley in Shanghai’s Julu Lu neighborhood, it’s so badly cut up that the Shanghai Daily News dubs it the Dim Sum Murder. It’s a chillingly apt name, all right—but how did the paper file its story and get it cleared before the police even found the body? Why was the murder scene so elaborately staged? And what’s the significance of the shards of ivory found inside Fallon’s lungs? As the wheels of justice grind on, three people take a special interest in the case: Fallon’s widow, Amanda Pitman, flown halfway around the world to retrieve the body of the husband she hated; Inspector Zhong Fong, head of Special Investigations in the Shanghai District; and Loa Wei Fen, the ritual killer who was hired to assassinate Fallon, and perhaps others as well. What would otherwise be a straight line from Fong to the killer and his employers is complicated by Fong’s lacerating memories of his actress wife Fu Tsong’s death four years ago—memories reawakened to snarling life by the return of Fu Tsong’s lover, Toronto theater director Geoffrey Hyland, to direct a Chinese production of Twelfth Night. Toronto acting teacher Rotenberg’s first novel scores points for its vivid Shanghai sets, even if he can’t keep Fong’s past from sounding more interesting than his present.