DEATH WAITS IN SHANGHAI
By Wayne Carey
Bold Venture Press
236 pgs
With “Death Waits in Shanghai,” New Pulp writer Wayne Carey introduces one of his most intriguing heroes ever, John Falco. The son of a New York gangster, Falco abhors his family’s business. He runs away to China where he is taken into a Shaolin monastery and taught their way of living to include martial arts. Settling in Hong Kong and soon befriends both a former Irish revolutionist named Flanagan and a former Zulu prince, Mzoma. Once their partnership is established, Falco directs their affairs to helping others in trouble. One can’t help reading this stuff and not recall previous classic pulp teams ala Doc Savage and his crew.
Now all this is backstory. This story begins with the kidnapping of a young American woman living in San Francisco. Her father being a U.S. Senator, the local FBI contacts Falco requesting his assistance in finding her. Her kidnapper proves to be a small time crook named Lee Wong and he is going to smuggle the girl to China aboard a luxury liner. Falco and company procure passage and soon all of them are sailing across the Pacific. During the trip Falco is introduced to Wong’s sister, Jiao; a beauty who intrigues him. But is she part of her brother’s plot or an innocent bystander brought along to misdirect pursuers? Falco and his companions fail to find the missing daughter by the time the boat arrives in Honolulu. He then hopes to find the girl with the aid of the local police but once again Wong eludes him, departing the very next morning aboard a Japanese ship bound for Shanghai.
So the chase continues to the Far East with the action moving from Shanghai, then to Hong Kong and finally back to Shanghai. Against this backdrop are the historical machinations ala the Chinese Communist insurgency to overthrow the government at the same time Japan’s encroaching continues to grow bolder with the threat of immanent invasion.
Wayne Carey is one of the real bright stars in the New Pulp fiction today and “Death Waits in Shanghai” soundly proves that claim. Great characters, exotic locales, and non-stop action. What more could any serious pulp fan want?
