On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne (Vintage, £16.99)
Osborne’s latest is set in a vividly rendered Hong Kong during the Chinese government’s brutal suppression of the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations. The ghosts of Graham Greene’s world-weary expat protagonists hover over jaded but shrewd Brit Adrian Gyle, who is reconciled to the fact that both his ambition and his career have stalled. Jimmy Tang, his feckless friend from Cambridge, whose wealthy family pays expedient lip service to Beijing, offers him glimpses of the high life – literally, because his mansion on the steep hillsides of the affluent Mid-Levels looks down on the street fighting and tear gas clouds below. When Rebecca To, a young activist with whom Jimmy is having an affair, vanishes, Adrian attempts to solve the mystery. Osborne wisely resists any pat answers in a whodunnit wrapped in a superbly atmospheric portrait both of a particular place and time, and of the creation and destruction of a friendship. Highly recommended.
