The military gave him discipline and a sort of family.

He ended up in an orphanage and working in a brothel, but he did manage to get in the United States Navy. His father ran out pretty early, his mother was a bit of a drinker. He had a pretty tough upbringing around Tulsa. But it's not like he chose that life, right? 'Lucky' Jack Riley seems to epitomize the strange-and sometimes strangely forgiving-culture of the place, given that he was able to set himself up there.

If you could get yourself there and wanted to reinvent yourself, it was the greatest city to go to. It was what they used to call freebooting capitalism. It had the hotels, art deco architecture, cars, jazz, nightclubs, dance halls, casinos, all of that. Because of the Communist revolution, we don't appreciate it now, but in the 1930s, Hong Kong was nothing special at all, Singapore was nothing special at all. The fifth-largest city in the world at the time, after London, New York, Paris, and Berlin. It was an international city, run largely by foreigners. Paul French: It was part of China, but not part of China-it wasn't like Hong Kong or Singapore or other colonies.

VICE: How did Shanghai come to enjoy such a unique reputation in the 1930s? We talked to the author to find out why the city was so welcoming of rogue outsiders, whether these guys were more sordid predators than hapless party boys, and how World War II ended their reign, changing Shanghai forever. The two men joined forces to lead a sort of Orientalist mini crime empire in 1930s Shanghai, serving up as much gambling, drugs and sex work as fellow foreigners could handle. In his new book, City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai, French explores the appeal of the city to outlaws by telling the stories of the life and times of 'Lucky' Jack Riley, an American who escaped prison, and 'Dapper' Joe Farren, a Jewish nightclub impresario. These days, global party destinations like Ibiza are considered uniquely debauched, welcoming of outcasts and college kids alike, but the stories French heard about 1920s Shanghai stuck with him well into adulthood. A wide open place, it was perhaps the only major metropolis in the world where you didn't need a passport or any kind of papers to slip in and disappear. Thanks to stories passed down by his relatives, French always had a vague awareness that Shanghai was an incredible city before 1949, when the Communist revolution changed everything.

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