The Railway Conspiracy

The Railway Conspiracy (2025) SJ Rozan & John Shen Yen Nee (Dee & Lao #2)

Set in London in 1924

Dee has returned to London and once again drawn Lao, Sergeant Hoong and Jimmy Fingers together.

He peered over his glass. “Are you quite all right, Lao? I haven’t been here seventy-two hours and already your life has been threatened, you’re bruised, your suit is covered in mud, and your best brandy is in danger of becoming extinct. I fail to see the pleasure in any of that.”

At the center of this puzzle is the new railway.

The passage here from China by fast steamship takes six weeks. Overland by rail, Peking to London can be accomplished in nine days. It nearly leaves one breathless.

Honestly, that’s one of the things I adore about historical stories–seeing the introduction technologies that are absolutely going to change the world.

“The drivers of motorcars will have to learn to share the roads with barrows and horse-drawn wagons.”
…
“Oh, I think there’ll be no sharing,” the driver said. “This beauty will be my last horse. When she’s ready for her pasture, I—or my sons—will turn to a lorry for our trade.”

And the stories also remind us how much society has change (and how much we have to lose).

“She has chosen to be addressed as ‘Madam’ because, as a woman of business, she finds herself taken more seriously if it is assumed that a man is behind her demands and decisions.”

“She doesn’t object to having to perform this subterfuge?”

“She objects strenuously.”

I think there is more humor in this book, which I quite enjoyed.

“Ah,” Hoong said when, looking over from the foot of a ladder leaning against the shelves, he saw that it was we who had set the bell above the door to tinkling. “Dee, Lao. I see my attempts to earn my humble living are about to be interrupted again.”

At Hoong’s shop, he explained his plan to the Sergeant, who sighed and turned his shop sign to “closed.”

And of course a great deal of history, much of which was ignored in my American schooling.

He’s a White Russian, one of the many who renounced Russian citizenship after the revolution and fled to Harbin.

Pointing the finger at Isaki for being a ronin was redundant and, I thought, a touch unsporting. The samurai class having been abolished by edict in Japan more than a half-century earlier, all those who continued to follow the Bushido were, by definition, ronin, masterless. Those who chose to live by the sword had no choice now but to sell its services.

The Republic had been declared in 1912. China was no longer ruled by an emperor, and the sumptuary laws reserving yellow clothing to the imperial family had long since been repealed. Chinese were free to wear what we wanted, yet centuries of tradition made it difficult for many people to feel comfortable donning clothing of the shade.

As with the previous book, the fight scenes (of which there were many) did nothing for me as I can’t visualize things in my head (even if I did know the various fighting terms) but I could get the scenes were very cinematic.

Although the main arc was concluded, there were threads left unfinished that left future story lines open.

Characters: Dee Ren Jie/Spring-heel Jack, Sergeant Hoong, Jimmy Fingers, Mr. Lao She, Gao Feng, Mei Qiang, Honorable Bertrand Russell, Dora Russell, Anthony Cartwright, Timmy McCorkle, Count Vladimir Voronoff, Isaki, Wu Ze Tian, A. G. Stephen, Yoshio Markino, Marie Markino, Ang Chun, Peng Lian Liang, Chung Kao Kun, Mr. Ted Bolton, Arthur Waley, Commissioner Lin Tse Shu, Alice Green, Constable Ritts, Constable Tucker, Constables Buck and Coyle, Larrimore, Hartford, Zhang Zuo Lin the notorious warlord

Publisher: Soho Press

Rating: 8/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• « « Paladin’s Faith