Long-time Shanghai resident, Paul French is the author of the New York Times best seller Midnight in Peking (Penguin), a true crime story of the grisly murder of a young English woman in 1937 in Peking. French’s account, and his own sleuthing, makes for an eloquent examination of the harrowing last days of colonial Peking. Midnight in Peking was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Bestseller, was awarded an “Edgar” by the Mystery Writers of America and is currently being developed as a series for UK TV by Kudos Film and Television. French has just published a Penguin Special continuing his investigations into the seedy underbelly of 1930s China called The Badlands: Decadent Playground of Old Peking. He is now working on the third of his Badlands trilogy, which takes us into the dancehalls, casinos and whorehouses of wartime Shanghai.