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Shanghai Incident
I had two callers my first night in Shanghai - death and a honey blonde.
First, the man who sat opposite me in a tiny, hot room - the man I had traveled thousands of miles to meet - was shot in the throat; he choked to death on his own blood.
Then I was fleeing - me and my pounding heart - from a pock-marked citizen, through black, slippery alleys toward the haven of a ricksha up ahead.
Wonderful ricksha - for it held a girl with honey-colored hair and a perfect nose, a girl I thought I had seen before, but maybe in a dream.
Dark dream, dream of violence, that could happen only in Shanghai by night.
First, the man who sat opposite me in a tiny, hot room - the man I had traveled thousands of miles to meet - was shot in the throat; he choked to death on his own blood.
Then I was fleeing - me and my pounding heart - from a pock-marked citizen, through black, slippery alleys toward the haven of a ricksha up ahead.
Wonderful ricksha - for it held a girl with honey-colored hair and a perfect nose, a girl I thought I had seen before, but maybe in a dream.
Dark dream, dream of violence, that could happen only in Shanghai by night.
158 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
2 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Becker
43 books13 followersStephen Becker (1927–1999) was an American author, translator, and teacher whose published works include eleven novels and the English translations of many works, including Elie Wiesel’s The Town Behind the Wall and The Forgotten and André Malraux’s The Conquerors.
He was born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1927, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of Paul Harris and Guggenheim Fellowships and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
His best-known works include A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis; When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee’s surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels: The Chinese Bandit (1975), The Last Mandarin (1979), and The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).
Equally distinguished as a translator, a biographer, a commentator on the popular arts, and a novelist, Stephen Becker brings to his fiction a breadth of experience with world culture and human behavior which yields moral complexity and psychological verity in his work. Two major themes intertwine through his novels—the problems of justice and the necessity for self-knowledge and self-fulfillment.
Becker's examination of society's structure and limitations and his portrayal of men seeking "grace under pressure" is a significant contribution to contemporary fiction. The existential premises of the works—individuals finding meaning inside the arbitrary bounds of social order—reflect our acceptance of the civilization we have built.
Read more: Stephen (David) Becker Biography - JRank Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4144...
He was born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1927, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of Paul Harris and Guggenheim Fellowships and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
His best-known works include A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis; When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee’s surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels: The Chinese Bandit (1975), The Last Mandarin (1979), and The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).
Equally distinguished as a translator, a biographer, a commentator on the popular arts, and a novelist, Stephen Becker brings to his fiction a breadth of experience with world culture and human behavior which yields moral complexity and psychological verity in his work. Two major themes intertwine through his novels—the problems of justice and the necessity for self-knowledge and self-fulfillment.
Becker's examination of society's structure and limitations and his portrayal of men seeking "grace under pressure" is a significant contribution to contemporary fiction. The existential premises of the works—individuals finding meaning inside the arbitrary bounds of social order—reflect our acceptance of the civilization we have built.
Read more: Stephen (David) Becker Biography - JRank Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4144...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 15, 2026
Probably as close to lit-fic as I've ever read in a Gold Medal.
Dave Chapman is back in Shanghai. He was there at the end of WWII and is back again, just before the Communists take over. He's been hired by a shadowy company to find a geologist who had been studying some land and disappeared. Chapman ends up meeting a bunch of interesting folks along the way, who all seem to be after the same geological report, save a cop named Cheng who might be my favorite character. He got his heart broken by a girl in Evanston, once.
In many ways this follows a lot of the beats you expect in a Gold Medal. There's the shady dealings, eccentric characters, the hot babe, the MacGuffin at the center of it all. But along with those things, author Becker infuses the book with beautiful passages about Shanghai—the smells, the tastes, the people, the character of the city—so much that I wanted to be there, to see this now lost city. Becker, to no surprise, did spend time in pre-Communist China. His descriptions ring true because they come from experience.
Chapman is a witty guy and the novel is loaded with jokes and snarky asides. They added to the flavor of the adventure. There's a lot of self-reflection, too. Not so much philosophizing, but Chapman's wonderings about where his values lie. He has to make some hard decisions at the book's end and he labors over them for several pages. I didn't mind, but it was notable because I'm used to more prosaic characters in pulp.
I'd like to read more by Stephen Becker. He wrote a "Chinese Trilogy" that's, I gather, sort of an adventure suspense kind of thing. He also wrote historical fiction about early 20th century Haiti. Any of those might fit the bill for a decent read in the future. If I need an escape, I know where to look.
Dave Chapman is back in Shanghai. He was there at the end of WWII and is back again, just before the Communists take over. He's been hired by a shadowy company to find a geologist who had been studying some land and disappeared. Chapman ends up meeting a bunch of interesting folks along the way, who all seem to be after the same geological report, save a cop named Cheng who might be my favorite character. He got his heart broken by a girl in Evanston, once.
In many ways this follows a lot of the beats you expect in a Gold Medal. There's the shady dealings, eccentric characters, the hot babe, the MacGuffin at the center of it all. But along with those things, author Becker infuses the book with beautiful passages about Shanghai—the smells, the tastes, the people, the character of the city—so much that I wanted to be there, to see this now lost city. Becker, to no surprise, did spend time in pre-Communist China. His descriptions ring true because they come from experience.
Chapman is a witty guy and the novel is loaded with jokes and snarky asides. They added to the flavor of the adventure. There's a lot of self-reflection, too. Not so much philosophizing, but Chapman's wonderings about where his values lie. He has to make some hard decisions at the book's end and he labors over them for several pages. I didn't mind, but it was notable because I'm used to more prosaic characters in pulp.
I'd like to read more by Stephen Becker. He wrote a "Chinese Trilogy" that's, I gather, sort of an adventure suspense kind of thing. He also wrote historical fiction about early 20th century Haiti. Any of those might fit the bill for a decent read in the future. If I need an escape, I know where to look.
Displaying 1 of 1 review