Wilfred Sinclair, the senior member of a wealthy Australian sheep ranching family, dispatches his playboy younger brother Rowland on an important business trip to Shanghai to sell wool. Rowly is an accomplished portrait artist, but a bohemian at heart, and knows nothing about negotiating deals, let alone the wool business.

When Wilfred sweetens the pot by allowing him to take his entourage of friends along, Rowly reluctantly agrees. He is assured that his role is simply to smile, be charming and act as a placeholder for the Sinclair family name at the bargaining table. Having never been to China, the plan appeals to his pals: Edna, a beautiful model and sculptress; would-be poet Milton; and Clyde, whose skills come in handy when fisticuffs are called for.

"Throughout this action-packed mystery, author Sulari Gentill describes in stunning fashion Shanghai of the mid-1930s: the dance halls, the opium dens, the rickshaws and the rampant thievery."

The group arrives in Shanghai and checks into the luxurious Cathay Hotel where Wilfred leased a suite, complete with a private staff of maids and a butler. Warned that kidnapping is rampant in Shanghai, they acquire a personal street-savvy chauffeur who warns them to be careful of who they trust.

On their first evening, they go dancing at the risqué hotel cabaret where Rowly is approached by a beautiful taxi girl named Alexandra Romanovna. They learn that she once claimed to be the missing Romanov princess, Anastasia, the sole survivor of the slaughter of Emperor Nicholas II’s family in 1918. Now, she is sadly reduced to dancing for tickets with patrons in order to afford food and shelter.

When Alexandra accepts Rowly’s invitation for tea the next afternoon, he arrives late for their engagement and finds her brutally murdered in his suite. He winds up in handcuffs, and his friends must seek safe lodging elsewhere.

Throughout this action-packed mystery, author Sulari Gentill describes in stunning fashion Shanghai of the mid-1930s: the dance halls, the opium dens, the rickshaws and the rampant thievery.

Each entry in this splendid series unveils both the delightful and dangerous aspects of the Land Down Under. Chapters are introduced with brief clips from newspapers reflecting actual events of the era. Readers are treated to vintage Australia with its conflicting ideologies, politics and hopes for the future.

In book four, PAVING THE NEW ROAD, Rowly was detained in Germany, captured and tortured by a high-ranking Nazi. This thoroughly terrifying incident scars him for life, both figuratively and literally, which very nearly costs him his life in SHANGHAI SECRETS.