Mason, F. van Wyck The Shanghai Bund Murders.
War-torn China, circa 1933, is the setting for Mason's political thriller, much of which is set aboard the "squat little river steamer" KIANGSU during a voyage from Naking to Shanghai. Traveling first class are an international cross section of passengers including a supposed English tea trader (he's really a German spy/agent), a pair of annoying American female tourists, an Austrian-born "coaster" (i.e., a lady of quite ill repute), a suspicious Chinese gentleman, an American mercenary and, not one, but two intelligence officers (one British and the other Mason's continuing character, American spy Capt. Hugh North). Before you know it the British officer has been murdered and his American counterpart is engaged in finding out just what happened. Mason's plotline, particularly once the KIANGSU reaches Shanghai, is a complicated one but his basic storyline traces the efforts by a German conspiracy which is attempting to foment the expulsion of British and American commercial interests from Shanghai through an armed Chinese rebellion. Utilizing competing Chinese warlords (including a ragtag Communist "army") and even elements of Shanghai's French community, the German plot revolves around a maritime arms smuggling attempt that is foiled at only the last moment (by Col. North, of course). Mason spices up his story with descriptions of gruesome tortures (devised by nefarious Chinese) and with salacious hints at "coaster" Mme. Ruby Braunfeld's way of life. But what stays with the reader is his prophecy of renewed German militarism. In one particularly telling section, Mason scores it just about - but not quite - right when one of his characters notes that German interests wanted to crush the American, British and French presence in the Far East and that Germany's only ally in the coming days will be Italy. (Mason's one misstep here: his character includes Japan in the list of Germany's enemies). It is for Mason's prescience vis-à-vis Germany's renewed militarism in the 1930s that his novel is included in this bibliography.
Note that in the late 1950s Mason rewrote and abridged the novel, changing the plot to reflect then-current Cold War tensions between the United States and Communist China. In the process he also turned Col. North into something of a swinging, James Bond-like super agent. This later effort, entitled The China Sea Murders was published in a paperback edition by Pocket Books in 1959.