City of Masks: A Novel of Shanghai

A terrific read, full of surprises—an action-packed story of grifters, gangsters, and spies in WWII Shanghai.

World War II–era international Shanghai is a city of refugees, grifters, gangsters, and spies.

Obermann, on the run from the US, is one of them, quickly enmeshed in a deadly game of hide-and-seek with Green Gang gangsters. Recruited by the OSS for an underground role in an ingenious plot to sabotage the local German–Japanese Axis war effort, he is on his own in a perilous kabuki dance of pretense and deceit, navigating the local Nazi leadership and the Japanese Kempeitai hot on his heels.

A daring prison escape of Allied POWs goes off the rails, and when the OSS plot is betrayed, it’s up to Obermann and Steffi, a mysterious Jewish refugee, to save it from disaster.

In a thrilling, last-minute, desperate effort, Obermann and Steffi must find a way to
warn the Americans while saving Shanghai’s Jewish refugees from the Nazi Holocaust.
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“Mike Blumenthal has watched Shanghai change through its many transformations.
City of Masks is a delightful and compelling page-turner.”
—JONATHAN KAUFMAN, author of The Last Kings of Shanghai

“Former Treasury Secretary Mike Blumenthal has crafted a truly riveting, suspenseful,
and thrilling journey into the fascinating world of wartime Shanghai.”
—LAUREN TARSHIS, New York Times bestselling author