A longform true crime story from the writers' cooperative Deca.
In 2008, Canadian model Diana O'Brien was stabbed to death in a Shanghai stairwell just twelve days after arriving in the city on a three-month modeling contract. The actions of both police investigators and O'Brien's Chinese modeling agent soon aroused suspicion, as O'Brien's family sought information in China's opaque legal system. Ultimately, their quest would put them face to face with O'Brien's accused killer.
At once a page-turning murder mystery and a work of deep investigation, And The City Swallowed Them is based on dozens of interviews with investigators, models, and both the victim's and the convicted murderer's families. The book moves from Shanghai's back alleys to the seedy underbelly of high fashion, where young models travel alone to strange cities, often with falsified work papers, and sleep ten to an apartment between cover shoots. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai's explosive urbanization, the work also explores the world of China's liudong renkou, or floating population, where the hopes of newcomers from poor villages often turn to dust -- leading some to horribly desperate acts.
And The City Swallowed Them overturns assumptions about both the glamorous world of international modeling and China’s feared justice system, where the conviction rate for criminals is 99.9 percent. More than a true crime story, And The City Swallowed Them lays bare powerful forces that send two families on a collision course from distant sides of the Pacific.
Read an excerpt in Foreign Policy.
And The City Swallowed Them is the debut title from the writers' cooperative Deca. It is available in Amazon's Kindle Singles store in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and many other markets. It is also available through Deca's iOS app.
If you are in China and are having trouble getting a copy through one of these outlets, please get in touch.