In his novel China Running Dog (Plum Rain Press, 2025), a young man in his early twenties lives in Shanghai in the year 2000, in a greed-crazed free-for-all moral and lawless vacuum created by the Chinese Communist Party. Johnny Trent, small-time entrepreneur from Basildon in the UK, ends up in China, where he meets Felix Fawcett-Smith, fresh off the boat and from the other side of the tracks. An unlikely friendship begins.

Johnny impresses the well-bred Felix with his street smarts until Felix takes Johnny’s advice too literally – and too far – and slips into Shanghai’s murky underbelly. He enters a world where the Party, power, and connections to them, are all that matter, where criminals are given sainthoods and saints sent to hell.

Johnny tries to stop Felix’s spiral, not least because Felix is taking a sweet, angelic girl, Anita, down with him and Johnny has feelings for Anita that he has never dared to put into words. But Felix thinks he knows best. Like Johnny, all he wants is respect.

It’s up to Johnny to save whoever he can, besides himself.

Books mentioned in this podcast: Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui, Shanghai by Richie Yokomitsu (transl. Dennis Washburn), Candy by Mian Mian

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