In  Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set  amid the chaos that reigned in China in the run-up to World War II. The  story unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for  control of Manchuria—an area some called China’s “Wild East”—and an  explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Semyon  Kaspé, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately  murdered by disaffected, antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on  the orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father’s wealth.  When local authorities deliberately slow-walk the search for the  kidnappers, a young French diplomat takes over and launches his own  investigation.

Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the true, tragic saga  of Kaspé is told in the context of the larger, improbable story of the  lives of the twenty thousand Jews who called Harbin home at the  beginning of the twentieth century. Scott recounts the events that led  to their arrival and their hasty exodus—and solves a crime that has  puzzled historians for decades.