Editor’s Note:

This series focuses on individuals who have lived in China for a while and have a tale that’s worth telling. Age, gender, nationality and race are all unimportant in comparison with what adventures the subject has been up to, the experiences they can recount. Get in touch with a tip about a China story that deserves to be told. (features@shanghaidaily.com)

Shanghai is a city where people can reinvent themselves and a fictional American ex-convict tries to do just that: he flees to the Pearl of the Orient from New York after a failed and deadly armored car robbery.

Ex-con Brendan Lavin, starts life over, runs a bakery, marries a Chinese woman, has a child, and tries to run from his ghosts. Life seems good.

But in author Kirk Kjeldsen’s first novel “Tomorrow City,” criminals from his past find him 12 years later and demand he help them rob a wealthy Chinese diamond merchant — or they will kill his family and expose him.

The noir crime thriller has received generally favorable reviews as a fast-paced, atmospheric read. It was published in August by Hong Kong-based Signal 8 Press.

The book is now available at Garden Books on Changle Road in Shanghai.

Kjeldsen got the idea for the novel while he was living in Europe several years ago, but he didn’t start writing until he came to Shanghai. Of all the world’s cities, Shanghai was the prefect setting, he told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview.

“Lavin expected to start a new life in a city, while Shanghai has reinvented itself for past generations,” he said. “So I think the place is a perfect match with the theme of the story.”

Some sites in the book, such as the bakery and the jewelry store, the intended target, are based on real places.

“They are places that I love, and I frequently visit or pass by, so I write them into the story,” he said.

As for writing about criminals, the author observed, “I think everyone can be criminals if given the conditions and they make the wrong choices. I don’t believe in so-called crime genre. Basially, we are who we are.” People define themselves by their choices.

The most fascinating thing about Shanghai, despite its modernity, is that people all seem connected and neighbors are close, he said.

“In the United States you may walk on the street and find no one with you. There’s even a lyric of a song saying ‘Nobody walks in LA,’ but that phenomenon doesn’t occur in Shanghai. You can never be alone here and that’s an idea included in ‘Tomorrow City’,” he said.

Kjeldsen worked on television shows that include NBC’s “Whoopi” and Fox’s “The Inside,” and he sold some movie scripts that have yet to be made. As a screenwriter, he didn’t always feel free to write what he wanted because there are so many factors that affect story and character development.

Writing for television is limiting because of many factors, while writing a novel is liberating, he found.

“When it comes to TV shows, you have the network, you have the studio, you have producers and the director and sometimes even actors who have strong opinions,” he said. “And if you’re writing something for an established show, you have to write along a track that’s already been formed. For instance, if you write for Smallville (2001-11), you can’t make Clark Kent gay or have him die. But writing fiction is an absolutely different experience.”

The Detroit native grew up in various cities, including Boston and New York, and lived in Europe for several years. He doesn’t know how long he will be in Shanghai, where his US family joined him. His youngest child was born here. He teaches writing and film at the Department of Cinema of Virginia Commonwealth University in Virginia, US.

He has ideas for other novels but isn’t making long-term plans.

“My idea is that if you always think of tomorrow, you must miss something today,” he said. “I prefer to live in the present.”Comments on “Tomorrow City”

“With spare but riveting prose — and the rare ability to elicit the reader’s sympathy for a criminal — Kjeldsen has produced a thriller with plenty of the requisite shocks, a fully drawn protagonist, and a serious look at issues of justice and morality.”

— The Richmond Times-Dispatch

“His love and knowledge of the city is evident, and his writing is cinematic and poetic. No matter how far a man runs, sooner or later Fate will have him twisting and turning, and I read Tomorrow City with that delicious sense of growing dread dear to us fans of noir. My only criticism is that I wish Kjeldsen’s characters were more fleshed out.

— Georgette Spelvin on readmedeadly.com

“The story is fast moving, perhaps a little too fast moving. It really never takes much time to develop the characters beyond the primary character. However Mr Kjeldsen does some nice work developing the primary.”

— “checkman” on goodreads.com

Kirk Kjeldsen

Nationality: US

Age: 40

Self-description:

Writer, professor, father, husband, expat

Q&A

Favorite place in Shanghai:

Shanghai has so many great parks, but the park next to the Xingguo Hotel is probably my favorite. It’s usually just locals and there are rarely many people. It’s peaceful. I also love wandering through the old shikumen lanes and alleys.

Strangest sight:

One of the first days I was here in 2010, I looked out my hotel window at about 6am and saw a dozen people moving together in slow motion. They looked like ghosts in the early morning fog ... they were practicing tai chi. They were in their seventies and eighties. It’s rare to see groups of elderly people out together in America, and even rarer seeing them exercise. You see different things here every day that you don’t see in America, Europe or elsewhere. I wouldn’t call them strange; I’d just call them different, or fascinating, or unique.

Motto for life:

Be present, live in the moment.

Worst experience:

The few experiences that initially seemed negative turned out to be positive in the long run. There’s a Taoist story about an old farmer whose horse ran away, about the idea that misfortune may actually be a blessing. The majority of my experiences in life have been the same way. Life is what you make of it.

How to improve Shanghai:

I like Shanghai the way it is, and it would be presumptuous for me to suggest how to improve it after only being here a few years. I wouldn’t want it to become like New York City, or Paris, or any other city. I hope it retains its unique character as it continues to grow and evolve.

Advice to newcomers:Abandon any preconceived ideas about Shanghai and China, be open and flexible. Don’t expect whatever you had wherever you came from. Shanghai isn’t New York, or London, or even Beijing. It’s Shanghai, and living here can be an amazing, life-changing experience if you’re open to it. There’s no other city like it, and it feels like the center of all things today, like New York City in the 20th century and Paris or London in the 19th.