Book: In the Shadow of the Noonday Gun
Many retired expatriate policemen have settled in Hong Kong, but too few have come forward with readable evidence of their careers.
by Mike Smith
Self-publishing
Many retired expatriate policemen have settled in Hong Kong, but too few have come forward with readable evidence of their careers. So former officer Mike Smith's 16 semi-autobiographical short stories, In the Shadow of the Noonday Gun, is an obvious bestseller.
With his debut book already No1 on the local non-fiction charts, Smith, 60, is in the frame as a potential homegrown writing talent.
His anthology's finest yarn, Inside Job, about an attempt to apprehend a cat burglar at the force's living quarters, hints at life in a colonial-era "chummery". But nostalgia buffs might feel the author could have opened up more on the day-to-day aspects of colonial police life via conversations over beer and curries at The Hermitage, the banter after rugby training at Boundary Street, and hushed asides on careers and cases on the bowling green. Policemen are people too.