The Shanghai Books in Order

The Shanghai books follow Jake Greenberg, an American expatriate who keeps landing in places where business, crime, and politics overlap. Across the series, he moves from Siberia in the Russian Civil War to treaty-port China and then into the long shadow of the Japanese invasion. These are historical mysteries first, but they also borrow a lot from spy fiction and old adventure stories.

Jake is not a polished detective with a neat office and tidy cases. He is a veteran, a traveler, and later a Shanghai casino owner who often gets pulled into trouble because he knows the right people and can move between worlds. He deals with soldiers, police, diplomats, smugglers, gangsters, refugees, and revolutionaries. That gives the series its shape: one foot in everyday life, one foot in history turning violent.

Shanghai is not just scenery.

In books like The Second Enemy, Betrayal in Shanghai, The Shanghai Box, and The Shanghai Spy, the city feels divided and alive. Foreign concessions, consulates, riverfront streets, nightclubs, newspapers, and criminal networks all matter. Borders inside the city are almost as important as borders between countries. A shooting or a murder never stays simple for long, because every clue can brush against a warlord, an intelligence service, or a government trying to hold on.

The series also broadens beyond Shanghai when it needs to. The Last Train traps Jake on the Trans-Siberian Railway during the Russian Civil War. West of Shanghai sends him into the interior of China amid competing warlords. The Shanghai Conspiracy plays out near the Chinese-Russian border, while Lost in Shanghai and High Stakes in Shanghai pull the story into the fear, displacement, and pressure of the late 1930s and early 1940s. By The Shanghai Operation, the stakes have fully shifted into wartime resistance and survival.

Nothing stays small for long.

There is a running personal thread, too. Jake builds a circle around himself, including close Chinese allies and, later, Claire Turner, a sharp reporter who becomes central to his life. That helps the books feel connected even when the cases change from murder to espionage to rescue work. The larger arc is less about one master villain and more about watching Jake navigate a world that keeps getting more dangerous.

Expect a mix of mystery plotting, political tension, and a lot of historical texture. These books are a good fit for readers who like crime fiction with trains, consulates, coded messages, warlords, and the messy realities of the years between the world wars.