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When widow Emily Stratton arrives in Portland Oregon after her husband Horace's death she's quite surprised. She had lived her whole life in China as the daughter of missionaries and is amazed at what she sees in the budding new city of Portland. Accompanied by her teenage son, Robert, Emily means to make her home in the new city and is pleased when she makes some acquaintances, but before long she discovers that her husband was even more of a cutthroat businessman than she knew. Though she realized that her brutal husband was probably involved in illegal business, after Emily insists that his lawyers and business partners hand over her husband's papers, she finds that he had a hand in both opium and prostitution. Knowing how much hardship that Horace's businesses have brought to the Chinese people she is determined to try and do some good. But Horace's partners have other thoughts. They were hoping that Emily would either go back to China or behave like a dutiful, quiet widow and leave running the business to them. They offer to take the men's work of dealing with her husband's businesses off her poor woman's hands and make certain that she and her son have a comfortable life. Emily discovers a hard backbone in her makeup and finds that she no longer wants to be the quiet wife. She wants to be a force for doing some good with her husband's ill-gotten gains and refuses their help. Before long her new Chinese cook is found dead, and then a man who promised to help her find the truth is killed in her kitchen. Though worried, Emily becomes even more determined to find out who is menacing her and her son, Robert. But, unknown to her, Robert has begun to dabble in some of his father's bad habits and becomes friendly with the worst of the worst in Portland bars and taverns. THE SHANGHAI TUNNEL tries its best to be a meaningful story. It has a lot of the history of the beginning years of Portland, Oregon, which is fascinating all on its own. The story involves the opium trade and the heartache it has brought to the Chinese, a story I knew nothing about. It also mentions the hard life that the Chinese had here, along with some of the prejudices that were directed against them. We are told about the prostitution trade both here in the US and in China. We also learn some Chinese history and about the terrible poverty in that country. And as the title mentions, we learn about the maze of tunnels that ran, and still runs, under the city of Portland and the uses to which they were put. But unfortunately, even with dead bodies turning up, along with the stories of the horrors of drug addiction and prostitution, the tension level in the story doesn't rise much at all. From the start we see that her husband's greedy partners won't harm the female lead after she got to Portland. As for the identity of the really bad guy partner, the one that was the most dangerous and who would harm Emily and her son, well, that seemed clear from the start. And so when Emily saw a picture of the man and identified him to herself and left the readers out of her thoughts only for that single moment in the whole book, the only mystery was why she was being coy and not thinking the man's name so the readers would hear it. There is lots of good solid history here and the relationships between the lead characters are trusting and affectionate. But THE SHANGHAI TUNNEL falls far short when it calls itself a mystery. With little tension throughout the story and even a relaxation of the real prospect of some danger at the end of the book, THE SHANGHAI TUNNEL should have been presented as a straight, slightly romantic historical novel. Easy to read and full of information about Portland and the people who built it,THE SHANGHAI TUNNEL is mildly entertaining, but not much of a mystery.
Reviewed by A.L. Katz, April 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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