The Case of the Chinese Boxes

Claudia Valentine #2

by Marele Day

Claudia Valentine embarks on a hunt for the elaborate golden dragon key, through a circuit of ancient treasures, modern Triad killings, disturbing kidnappings, sleazy back alleys, pubs, and exotic temples.

Genres: Australia, Crime, Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Day was born in Sydney, and grew up in Pagewood, an industrial suburb. She attended Sydney Girls High School and Sydney Teachers' College and in 1973 obtained a degree from Sydney University. She has worked as a patent searcher and as a researcher and has also taught in elementary school during the 1980s.

Her Claudia Valentine series features a feminist Sydney-based private investigator but her breakthrough novel was Lambs of God which was a departure from the crime genre and features two nuns battling to save the island on which they live from developers; it became a bestseller.

She lives on the New South Wales North coast.

Marele Day's four book Claudia Valentine series has become a minor classic in Australian crime writing, but her Lambs of God (1998) was even more highly acclaimed as an original and provocative literary work, published in the US by Riverhead and in the UK by Sceptre. Her most recent novel was Mrs Cook, a rich portrayal of the life of a woman whose passion and intellect matched that of her celebrated husband.

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good solid holiday read. Feminist enough (in the sex-positive Phrynne Fisher sense) not to make me want to throw it across the room. Mainly a bunch of tropes. The back of the book says "nothing is what it seems" but if you have read the detective genre before then literally everything is what you'd expect. It's fun anyway and its minus the misogyny of 90% of the books.

A bonus for me was the Sydney setting. I love a recognisably Australian setting the more if it's places I have been to. I am going to see if there are more of these because it was fun. It would be even better if it was a little more complex but as holiday reading it is enjoyable and not insulting.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started strong, but the plot focused too much on Claudia’s life, instincts and skills in a similar way to Eve Zaremba’s Beyond Hope. At a certain point even the best detectives make mistakes, bad calls, poor choices, but Claudia beavers steadily away at her Chinese puzzle with remarkably little emphasis on actually solving it and lots on just satisfying her own curiosity, which she does admirably.

A decent entry into the feminist detective genre with some great atmospheric Sydney settings, but nothing explosive.

[Shuriu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, ok. There're several plot weaknesses and failures that beggar credibility (the main character surveils a subject all night, including his entrance and exit from a hotel room door that she notes and then a few days later she can't call the hotel to ask the guest from that room number; she instead fails to get the hotel to connect her with his many aliases and gives up). BUT.

There're a couple pages of sparkling dialogue. Much of the language is Aussie-specific colloquialism that I totally don't get, but that's ok. The historical context the author mentions intrigues. [The rest has spoiler alerts. Stop reading here.]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Still urbane and elegant but now I could see the eyes. They were innocent like babies' eyes but he was neither innocent nor a baby. I'd seen those eyes on tai chi masters. They came from a mind untroubled by emotion, a stilled lake that reflected but did not reveal. (p. 43)

The first Chinese in Australia settled in the Rocks in the 1830s then moved to the Haymarket when real estate got too expensive. And talking about real estate, the famous L.J. Hooker was Chinese. His given name was Tin You. in the early days there were 8000 men to one woman. The Chinese could bring out their menfolk as laborers but they had to be property owners before they could bring out women. Owning property also made a man a better marriage prospect back in China. So the brides who came out were often better educated and from higher social classes than their husbands. As a consequence they became influential members of the new community. They still were.
There were political divisions and religious divisions. When the Chinese arrived in Sydney they went to where their clan was and only did business with people from their own village. Now nobody cared about this, said Mr. Lau, only those keepers of tradition -- the old ladies. The joss houses were associated with clans as well. The Ko You one in Alexandria and the Sze Yap in Glebe.
Once, there had been many opium dens and gambling houses. Fantan. Mr. Lau was proud to have been one of the Chinese who had helped clean up Chinatown. As an influential Chinese man the police had asked him how this might be done. Of course a white face wouldn't have a chance of getting in through the door. But the door wasn't the only way. There were also the roofs. The Fire Brigade got their ladders up there and busted the joints. And that, as far as Mr. Lau was concerned, was the end of it. (p. 66-67)

[Fran · Rating 2 out of 5]

My first Australian mystery. Not horrible, but not great by any means.

[Anneb]

fun and a time capsule of inner west Sydney from the late 80s