Hard Underwriting

Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, September 2017. Year of the Rooster. Twenty years after the handover of the British Crown colony to communist China. The process to designate the territory's leader has been suspended, leading to renewed calls for electoral reform.

A high-flying investment banker is found at dawn on his doorstep, brutally murdered, his body almost cut in half. More financiers are soon killed in spectacular fashion, triggering a game of cat and mouse between the police and an elusive Japanese assassin, known within Tokyo's underworld as Shiryo, the spirit of death.

The investigation takes Chief Inspector Ethan Blake and Inspector Suki Lam from the boardrooms of multinational banks to seedy industrial warehouses in Kwun Tong and Aberdeen, as they desperately try to find a motive for the grisly series of murders.

In his debut crime novel, former investment banker Philippe Espinasse takes a ride on the dark side of Asia's fast-changing financial capital. Hong Kong becomes a playground, where wealthy expatriates rub shoulders with prostitutes and tycoons, while a younger generation aspires to democratic ideals.