Book review: In the City of Dragons, by Mike Smith

by Mike Smith
Windsor
3 stars
Guy Haydon

Mike Smith says his second self-published book of Hong Kong stories is named not after the city's fabled dragons, but his real-life characters - people "that are, to various degrees flamboyant, capricious, selfish, ambitious and aggressive".

It is no surprise then that it is hard to warm to some protagonists featured in his 16 eclectic, simply written tales.

Yet lovers of stories about the city's past, including its days as a British colony - and those who bought the former Hong Kong policeman's first book of stories about the city's "less than salubrious side", In the Shadow of the Noonday Gun - will find much to enjoy, even if some tales feel a little stretched, loosely edited and rather dry.

Smith admits that his stories are "adapted and have some flavour and colour of the period added to make them more readable and informative", but the people, "considerately, if thinly, disguised are as real as when I knew them or was told about them".

Sleeping With Pigs sees an alcoholic policeman get a muddy comeuppance. Bike that Message focuses on a drunk barrister's speeding Ferrari pursued by a dogged policeman, The Duel is about a "wild" showdown between a chef and a hotel manager, and The Coup on a crooked Macau dog race.