Inspector Danilov Books in Order

The Inspector Danilov novels drop you into Shanghai at the end of the 1920s, a city crowded with traders, gangsters, refugees and officials from all over the world. In the middle of it all is Inspector Pyotr Danilov, a Russian officer working for a thinly stretched, multilingual police force.

Danilov is an outsider twice over, a man who fled civil war and now tries to impose order on streets ruled as much by foreign concessions and crime bosses as by any uniform. He is meticulous, formal and not always easy company, but he sees patterns other people miss, and that makes him dangerous to the wrong people.

In Death In Shanghai, the opening book, a mutilated blonde woman is washed up on a stretch of riverbank grimly known as the Beach of Dead Babies. What looks like a suicide turns into something darker when Danilov discovers the body was weighted down and the Chinese character for justice carved into her chest. As more bodies appear, each carrying a new message, he realises someone is using Shanghai’s alleys and neon lights to stage a personal vendetta.

City Of Shadows begins with the discovery of an entire family murdered in their own home. Officially, Danilov is meant to be looking into the death of a fellow officer, but his instincts pull him toward the Lee family massacre and the strange letter clutched in a dead girl’s hand. The more he digs, the more he uncovers corruption that runs through the city’s foreign run institutions.

In The Murder Game a woman covered in thousands of cuts staggers through the streets screaming for Danilov before dying. Her death is only the first move in a taunting puzzle designed just for him, with each new body leaving another clue. Danilov and his Scottish assistant Strachan have to stay a step ahead of a killer who seems to know them far too well.

By The Killing Time, set in 1932, Shanghai is on the brink of open conflict. Japan is flexing its muscles, political factions are at odds and, amid the unrest, children start to disappear. When their bodies are displayed for all to see, Danilov is pulled into a case that tests his sanity as well as his loyalty to a city he has come to love.

The series has the feel of historical noir, with smoky clubs, crowded docklands and shifting alliances giving the investigations a constant sense of unease. If you enjoy atmospheric crime that treats the setting as a character in its own right, Inspector Danilov’s Shanghai offers a rich, uneasy world to explore.