A Yellowthread Street Mystery – serie

Set amidst the urban fantasia of Hong Kong, William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels raise crime fiction to a high art form. Surrealistic and suspenseful, vivid in their procedural details and brilliant in their scope, they are the work of a uniquely gifted writer. "As an inspired poet of the bizarre, [Marshall] orchestrates underlying insanity into an apocalyptic vision of the future." - New York Times Book Review "Marshall's novels feature seemingly supernatural events that turn out to have logical, if not precisely rational, origins. He has savage fun with police procedure." - TIME The first in Marshall's unforgettable, classic series of police procedurals – suspenseful and hilarious in equal measure. Yellowthread Street is the sort of place that breeds more crime than any cops can handle. Among the gangsters and the goldsmiths of Hong Bay, Chief Inspector Feiffer and his police department had their hands full ... tourist troubles, a US sailor turned stick-up artist, and the jealous Chinese who solved his marital difficulties with an axe. Then the Mongolian with a kukri brought an extra touch of terror to the district ... Yellowthread Street brings to vivid life a seamy world where people called Osaka Oniki the Disemboweller, Shotgun Sen and The Chopper feel at home, a world of surreal possibility recorded with unique humour and a poignant sense of humanity.

Set amidst the urban fantasia of Hong Kong, William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels raise crime fiction to a high art form. Surrealistic and suspenseful, vivid in their procedural details and brilliant in their scope, they are the work of a uniquely gifted writer. "As an inspired poet of the bizarre, [Marshall] orchestrates underlying insanity into an apocalyptic vision of the future." - New York Times Book Review "Marshall's novels feature seemingly supernatural events that turn out to have logical, if not precisely rational, origins. He has savage fun with police procedure." - TIME Postman Lawrence Shang was watching a film called The Axeman of Shanghai when his life abruptly ended. Carpet trader Edward Peng was enjoying The Last Picture Show. Death in both cases was instantaneous, caused by a small calibre handgun used at a range of two feet. With their deaths begins a series of apparently motiveless murders in one cinema after another across the Hong Bay district of Hong Kong – and a nightmarish investigation for Harry Feiffer, Detective Chief Inspector, Royal Hong Kong Police Force, and his staff at the Yellowthread Police Station. The Hatchet Man's next victim is a sailor off an American ship. Then a German is shot in an auction room. There's an unaccountable killing on a train near the Chinese border. And the crazy old Mrs Mortimer from the Old People's Home steps in front of a tram ... And for Harry Feiffer, time is running out. Full of real police procedure, suspense and fine irony, but with whole extra dimensions of the surreal and the poignant, the Yellowthread Street novels have no real compare. For those open to their charms, this series is a hidden masterpiece of crime fiction.

Set amidst the urban fantasia of Hong Kong, William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels raise crime fiction to a high art form. Surrealistic and suspenseful, vivid in their procedural details and brilliant in their scope, they are the work of a uniquely gifted writer. "As an inspired poet of the bizarre, [Marshall] orchestrates underlying insanity into an apocalyptic vision of the future." - New York Times Book Review "Marshall's novels feature seemingly supernatural events that turn out to have logical, if not precisely rational, origins. He has savage fun with police procedure." - TIME In the seamy Hong Bay district of Hong Kong, crimes of every shape and size were commonplace. But not letter bombs. Not till Mr Leung and Mr Ramaswamy were successively spread bloodily over the office walls. When Detective Inspector Spencer narrowly escaped becoming victim number 3, the Yellowthread Street police were grimly determined to track down the culprit – before the Special Branch got to him. But unless they could find the link between the neatly timed warning letters, the ghosts in the Chinese graveyard and the strange mission of Mr Conway Kan the millionaire, the killer would go free ... Gelignite is another tense and exciting drama from the pen of a master. Full of real police procedure, suspense and fine irony, but with whole extra dimensions of the surreal and the poignant, William Marshall's Yellowthread Street novels have no real compare. For those open to their charms, this series is a hidden masterpiece of crime fiction.