Blood, Opium & Betrayal: Inside Craig H. Bowlsby’s ‘Requiem for a Lotus’

Opium dens, political intrigue, murder and shifting loyalties—a perfect setting for a crime novel. In Requiem for a Lotus, Craig H. Bowlsby takes us into the heart of 1917 Shanghai, a volatile world where crime, obsession, and cultural conflict collide. The novel won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for “Best Unpublished Crime Novel,” establishing Bowlsby as a distinctive voice in historical crime fiction. Drawing on his background in creative writing, investigative work and award-winning hockey history, he brings an unusual depth of experience to his storytelling.

V13 Media spoke with Bowlsby about the inspiration behind Requiem for a Lotus, the challenges of resurrecting a vanished world, and the darker questions beneath the novel’s surface.

Shanghai is almost a character in its own right in Requiem for a Lotus. What did you discover about the city that surprised you most while researching it, and did any of those discoveries change the story you originally intended to tell?

Craig H. Bowlsby: “The thing that surprised me the most was the way the International Zone police (officially called the Municipal Police) tacitly allowed the gangs to kidnap young Chinese girls and force them into prostitution, making it essentially legal. But this approach was mostly pragmatic—the police had few resources, and proving such crimes rarely held up in court.

“Also, the general Chinese society in all the zones—Chinese, International and French—expected or at least tolerated such practices, so it would always be an uphill battle. This injustice was a surprise to me, and it certainly influenced my main character’s motivation. Also, his refusal to accept the status quo gave him more depth and made him a source of irritation to many groups, including his superiors.”

Your novel takes place in 1917, a time of enormous political and cultural tension. What makes that particular moment in Shanghai’s history such fertile ground for a crime story—and what parallels, if any, do you see between that world and our own?

“Well, I love transitional periods of history. Of course, most societies of the last two centuries have been operating through transitional elements, but each moment and shift of the kaleidoscope has its own colour and shape. For both Canada and Shanghai, these shifts through 1917 have not been well chronicled. Most novels on Shanghai center around the 1920s or 1930s, when the city-state reached the peak of its cultural identity. But many things in 1917 seemed like centaurs and griffins in comparison to the ’30s. Old values clashed with new ideas; new investigation techniques seemed like a waste of time to the detectives or weren’t being taught. For my protagonist, Fletcher, he finds an uphill battle in that regard, even though he is also stuck in the past, as a former Royal Northwest Mounted Police officer who feels more comfortable just hunting a suspect across the prairie on a horse.

“As for parallels to our own time, our world is moving so fast that investigative techniques can largely be employed through computer programs, with chemical and DNA analysis, atomic particle imaging, and deep information retrieval and comparison. And yet the vast number of crimes are not subjected to this analysis.  So there’s still a dichotomy through which a criminal can escape.

“People are still people, and science must often wait for its progenitors to catch up. As an example, the Quebec police force (the Sûreté du Québec) recently announced it would give all its officers body cameras—something that has existed for many decades. (Of course, in this case it was mainly an issue of cost.)

“Inspector Harmon Fletcher is operating in a world where cultural identity, power and morality constantly collide. How much of Fletcher’s investigation is really about solving a murder, and how much is about forcing him to confront his own assumptions?

“Insofar as some of his assumptions are wrong, this drives him deeper into a more violent procedure. The morality of his investigation clashes with the pragmatism of his instructions, which also drives him into a kind of escalation against time. But it’s not all about one murder; as I relate early on, Fletcher feels like he needs to expiate his former sin of failing to protect a previous young woman back in Canada, and this Chinese case echoes that Canadian case strongly. He might have given up this Shanghai case if he wasn’t so psychologically tied to it.”

Craig H. Bowlsby, photo by Jo Blackmore

Crime fiction often asks who committed the crime, but the more interesting question can be why people cross the line in the first place. What do you think ultimately drives the characters in Requiem for a Lotus toward violence, betrayal and obsession?

“Shanghai was the focal point for a perfect storm of desperation. Thousands of refugees were pouring into Shanghai from the Chinese civil war (which was mostly warlord against warlord) that had started in 1916, as well as the Great War that affected the whole world. At the same time, money was pouring into Shanghai from investors around the world, and everyone wanted a piece of the enormous profits available.

“Ironically, the great powers were now about to outlaw opium, after forcing China to consume it a few years before, and the gangs wanted to squeeze every ounce of profit from it before it became illegal. With thousands of unemployed workers desperate for any work, and not to join the army, it wasn’t hard to find people to help you rob, kidnap or kill.”

The title Requiem for a Lotus carries a sense of beauty, loss and mourning. What does the “lotus” represent to you, and did its meaning evolve as you wrote the novel?

“Well, the lotus is the ultimate flower of purity, growing out of the muck and mud of a river or pond. It symbolized innocence and goodness, and my female character who is murdered is represented very strongly by this flower. I wouldn’t say the meaning evolved or changed, but it took on more levels and strength in contrast to the several despicable people who haunt Shanghai in the novel. I think that contrast grows, and perhaps it helps the reader subconsciously to want to see justice done.”

You have a background in investigative work. Did that experience influence the way you approach clues, deception and interrogation differently from a writer who has never worked in that environment?

“I don’t know. Anybody with a keen mind can imagine cases and clues. (Think of Arthur Conan Doyle!) But I’ve worked as a skip tracer, an heir locator, an information gatherer at Statistics Canada and an historical researcher and identification hunter. In all these pursuits, you follow trails that might not exist, or come to dead ends, and you come to expect it. But the trick, I think, is to gather a lot of information and bring it together in case one atom is attracted to another atom. I’m not a very good detective. I probably wouldn’t see a moose hanging from the ceiling just above my eyeline. But I might see someone else noticing the moose, and I might follow their eyeline and finally look up.

“As for interrogation, I started out believing everybody was telling the truth. But police officers have to mistrust everyone as a matter of course, which is a hard way to live, I’m sure. But when you write characters in a mystery story, a lot of character development will be the degree to which characters are lying, either to others or to themselves. Or dissembling, or holding back, or telling tiny, almost unnoticeable white lies.”

Craig H. Bowlsby ‘Requiem for a Lotus’ book artwork

Historical fiction requires a writer to inhabit a world that no longer exists. How do you balance historical accuracy with the need to tell a compelling story—and where are you willing to bend history in service of the novel?

“Hmm. Well, yes, I’m willing to bend history a lot, but I hate to break it and rarely do. If it could have happened, I guess it’s fair game. But I much prefer to gather so much information that what I say or depict seems slightly unreal or unexpected to the reader, rather than making anything up. In my historical notes, I point out that Huang Jinrong, the leader of the Green Gang, achieved the official position of head of the French Chinese police in early 1918, but I imply in my novel (told in the summer of 1917) that he’s already head of the French Chinese Police.

“I did this for the flow of the story, and from what I could tell, he was already leading the Chinese Police before he received his official position. That’s the most I’ve fibbed in any historical piece. In most of my work, I’ve stuck to what was possible, even if it was barely so.”

There is something inherently dangerous about writing about another culture and another era. How did you approach the challenge of portraying 1917 Shanghai without filtering the entire world through a modern Western perspective?

“Yes. Nothing will ever be exactly right. It’s like acting and trying to represent an historical figure, especially one from a different culture. An actor does best when he/she prepares the most. When I research these things, I try to find out what the characters felt about the customs and facets of their lives. Were they moved by melodrama, or choral music? How prejudiced were the type of people you are trying to depict? What was their attitude about women, or corruption?

“If you read about what people actually said, or thought, as well as scrub the historical background, you’ll do a lot better, and you’ll feel closer to the truth. In fact, that’s a question I ask myself—do I feel close to the truth here? Also, I had some very important help from a researcher and translator named Charlene Wong, from Victoria, BC. I had long discussions with her, and she set me straight on many things. But having said that, I’m sure someone will find fault with the story somewhere, in some way. And that’s certainly fair.”

Your previous work includes award-winning hockey history, while Requiem for a Lotus moves into historical crime fiction. What connects these two very different worlds for you as a writer?

“The periods of hockey I wrote about were also long ago, mostly in the late 19th and early 20th century. I feel like I already had an insight into the people of that era when I wrote Requiem. But China was a lot different from North America. The thing that allowed me to write within that society with a certain confidence is that Shanghai was essentially run by Europeans, and their social structure and customs suffused the Chinese culture around them, so I had several comfortable paths that had been worn well in front of me.

“But you could say that one of the strongest moral imperatives of the European and North American culture of the time, for hockey players or policemen in Shanghai, was what an old hockey historian, Bill Fitsell, called muscular Christianity. There was also, of course, a strong belief in the benefits of colonialism. So, these viewpoints seemed to carry on through anywhere Westerners went, as a moral compass.”

The best crime novels leave readers questioning who the real victim is. Without giving anything away, did writing Requiem for a Lotus change your own understanding of victimhood, guilt or justice?

“Hmm. You could say writing the book changed my view of people’s motivation. For the protagonists, the antagonists, and everyone in between. Ultimately, every novel is about the decisions people make and why they make them. I tried to make everyone’s decisions hard.”

Craig H. Bowlsby, photo by Lisa Herrera

You studied creative writing under acclaimed crime novelist William Deverell. What is one lesson about writing—or about crime fiction specifically—that stayed with you and found its way into your own work?

“There are a couple of things I would highlight: Brain power and not being satisfied. Both of those things imply that you can do better. Your prose can probably be smoother, pithier, tighter or more elegant. Your plotting and character traits could probably use a lot more concentrated thought over a longer period of time. As for plot and character development in a crime novel, if I don’t see any light bulbs, I’m probably not doing the best I can do.”

Requiem for a Lotus is the beginning of a planned trilogy. Did you know from the beginning where Fletcher’s journey was going, or has the character started making decisions you didn’t anticipate?

“I thought I knew where the story was going at first, which was mostly in Vancouver. But after discussions with William Deverell, I started my protagonist out in Shanghai instead, which took up three years of research. As such, all my character’s decisions were something of a surprise to me. I suppose the unfamiliar territory contributed to that. On the other hand, it provided a kind of wonderland of unusual things that made my decisions—and Fletcher’s—exciting.

“(In theory, the second novel will be in Vancouver, and then back to China for the third novel, and Fletcher’s ultimate revenge.)”

If you could sit down with one character from Requiem for a Lotus and ask them a question they absolutely could not lie about, who would you choose—and what would you ask?

“I would ask Ling Min what she found attractive and captivating about Inspector Harmon Fletcher. One wouldn’t expect such a coupling. Fletcher himself wonders about it. But he explains his feelings many times to the reader through his thoughts, and I think we get a good sense that he’s attracted not only to her beauty, but to her spirit and talent. They also find out they both grew up on farms, and they are both transplanted to this great city, which is far from their usual experience.

“Nevertheless, I’ve not given the reader any interior introspection from Min on Fletcher, and we have only her words and actions while dating the tall policeman. So, did she actually love Fletcher? Was he especially exotic to her, or especially handsome? Fletcher suggests he’s not particularly handsome, and he scoffs at the suggestion by Johnny Black Cat that Min finds him handsome. I regret that I didn’t explore this further. But perhaps in the expected sequel (in the third novel) we might see Min again, and she might give us more insight.”