AustLit

'Alby Leung teaches English at the China Australia Management Training Institute in Shanghai, a goodwill project designed in Canberra, blessed in Beijing. Due to a misreading of his sketchy military credentials, he also acts as the projects informal security chief. Unaware of his limitations, his boss instructs him to save an old friend’s husband, a dubious character entangled in a local business wrangle. This lands the ill equipped Alby in a treacherous world of double dealing merchants, bent officials, murderous gangsters and hostile police, a scene overshadowed by the heated rivalry of Australia’s old ally, America, and her new best friend, China... a most unsettling climate for expat team-members deep in the Red Dragons den.'  (Publication summary)

'Alby Leung reckons the bloke offering the security gig is a nutbag. The bloke reckons Alby is some sort of military hardcase. Says he’ll place him in his team as an English teacher. Be weird enough if he was a teacher and army thug. But Alby's a tradie and staunch noncombatant. Still, heâ's being offered serious bucks, a flat rent free in hip Huangpu district, and it's an AusAID training project for God's sake? So what harm can there be? Well, plenty as it turns out. All starts with a missing workmate. Soon, Alby, is sinking in a swamp of killers, gangsters, bent bureaucrats and angry security officers.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.