'Midnight in Peking' Author Paul French Returns With Grisly Tales of Murder in Old China

Midnight in Peking author Paul French just can't resist a good crime story, whether it comes from Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin, or anywhere else in China. The self-professed "hutong hugger" is back with more tales of misdeeds from China's recent past. The bestselling author and former Shanghai resident chatted with the Beijinger about his new, audio-only project Murders of Old China.

It's been more than six years since Midnight in Peking and its follow-up, The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking. What kind of story made you want to come back to Beijing? It's not really your favorite city. ​​​​​​
Midnight in Peking was phenomenally well-received by readers around the world. It was very gratifying. And among the biggest audiences was Beijing (both foreigners and Chinese – the Chinese edition has been selling really well) where the interest in the book has at times reached obsession! Of course, Beijing frustrates and overwhelms me, its modern architecture and incarnation is not my preferred aesthetic at all. But, as long as there’s a hutong left I’ll return to Beijing.

This is your first time working on an audio-only book. How is it different than sitting down to start a text-based book?
I was really excited when the folk at Audible asked me if I’d like to do an Original for them. I had a lot of fascinating murder stories that were very revealing of China’s messy first half of the twentieth century, and shed light on foreign-Chinese relations. By using database searches and other techniques I also had new information on cases that were not well appreciated or overlooked either accidentally or wilfully at the time. But they weren’t all book-length tales. So this form: part highly researched book, part podcast lets me tell those stories, and explain the new evidence and miscarriages of justice very well.

It’s also the case that audio is exploding right now everywhere (just look at Ximalaya in China) and it’s a great way to reach my traditional audience and new people. But it’s tricky too – how to explain complex 20th-century Chinese history and politics to audiences that probably don’t always know that much Chinese history, without them getting bored and drifting off? And without footnotes! It all has to be entertaining and spoken.

How are the dark stories of these cities different? Will we see a book-length Paul French take on another Chinese city, like Harbin or Hong Kong?
These 12 murders range from Shanghai down to Hong Kong, up to Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia. But I was surprised at how much murder and mayhem there was in Tianjin. It gets rather overshadowed by the larger treaty port of Shanghai but it was a crazy place – I tell one story of the hatcheting to death of an Englishman in 1930 for complex and mysterious reasons and one American in 1935 was accused of poisoning his wife at the Tianjin American Tennis Club – it’s kind of Agatha Christie on the Hai River!

Will we see a big or small screen adaptation of Midnight in Peking anytime soon?
I’m working on another book about Shanghai now, about the chaos of the civil war and the period between 1947-1949. It's a very different, grungier, down-at-heel Shanghai than in the more neon and jazz drenched City of Devils. I hope to have some exciting news of Midnight in Peking very soon but sadly it’s all embargoed at the moment. You’ll be the first to know though. After doing 12 old China murders I need a bit of a rest!

Murders of Old China is now available from Audible (subscription required).

READ: Paul French Discusses His Book 'City of Devils'

Images courtesy of Paul French