Death of a Red Heroine: Inspector Chen 1

Inspector Chen Cao #1

by Qiu Xiaolong

Now a BBC Radio 4 Drama Series.

Shanghai in 1990. An ancient city in a country that despite the massacre of Tiananmen Square is still in the tight grip of communist control. Chief Inspector Chen, a poet with a sound instinct for self-preservation, knows the city like few others. When the body of a prominent Communist Party member is found, Chen is told to keep the party authorities informed about every lead. Also, he must keep the young woman's murder out of the papers at all costs. When his investigation leads him to the decadent offspring of high-ranking officials, he finds himself instantly removed from the case and reassigned to another area. Chen has a choice: bend to the party's wishes and sacrifice his morals, or continue his investigation and risk dismissal from his job and from the party. Or worse . . .

Genres: Mystery, China, Fiction, Crime, Asia, Mystery Thriller, Thriller

477 pages, Edición Kindle

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Qiu Xiaolong (裘小龙) was born in Shanghai, China. He is the author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels, Death of a Red Heroine (2000), A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006), Red Mandarin Dress (2007), and The Mao Case (2009). He is also the author of two books of poetry translations, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (2003) and Evoking T'ang (2007), and his own poetry collection, Lines Around China (2003). Qiu's books have sold over a million copies and have been published in twenty languages. He currently lives in St. Louis with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to learn a bit about how people live under a socialist dictatorship, Death of a Red Heroine is the novel for you. It is the first in a series of murder mysteries with Inspector Chen as the lead detective in the Special Case Squad. This is set in the 90s, right after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Inspector Chen is a policeman, but he is also a poet, so there are many snatches of poetry included. Free verse poetry is not what I enjoy, but it sets the scene well.

Chen is very smart and ambitious, so he is moving up quickly in the ranks, but he has one fatal flaw, complete and undeniable honesty. He is able to maneuver diplomatically within the system until stabbed in the back by an old party hack. Forces in the old guard want to stop him solving the crime, because of who it involves. His integrity will not let him stand idly by while someone gets away with murder. Chen is not a solo act; he has a few good colleagues and friends who admire his loyalty and sterling character. They bravely stand by him and help him; even though, they are risking their own livelihoods and maybe their lives.

[Luffy Sempai · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chinese are an idiosyncratic and an esoteric people. I am a Mauritian, born of Indian stock, dark skinned. There are lots of Chinese where I live, all of them prosperous. Just like the Mauritian Hindu urges her son or daughter to do well at school, so do the Chinese parents, even in Mauritius, instill business sense in their progeny.

The Chinese are under a Communist and capitalist regime, a dictatorial one. They can never catch a break, except where money is concerned. But they still have to breathe in the quasi poisonous air of their cities, the pollution that makes the orange sunset pink. The main character in this book, Inspector Chen Cao, tussles against corruption of his police force and that of his Party.

For Inspector Chen is a reluctant but pure hero. He is an amalgam of the fearless Greek hero, and the humble, reluctant Christian hero. This alloy opens up possibilities for the first book in the series. The author is talented, and creates characters that, when likable, endear them to the reader.

I had a lot of fun reading the English-translated Chinese poetry inserted artfully in the book. I indulged in translating the English poems in Hindi and found that the thoughts of the short lines meshed easily with the Hindi language, and it is easy too to make any Chinese poetry rhyme into, as I suspect, most languages of the world.

This book has a trick up its sleeve, or perhaps two. First, it tries to delay the breakthroughs of the case, to keep the suspense going and to write a better if not longer book. That, I enjoyed. It also was quite self aware of what it was doing and kept inserting meta stuff in the book, to its enrichment.

I had a far cliché ending in mind for the book. The most blatant artistic license the book took was during the bal masqué segment. Nothing was achieved, nothing was resolved. Did I find it appealing? Hell yes. The scene played like a John Woo movie scene that was an homage to Tarantino. That scene was a mixture of 60s James Bond with film noir and 90s thriller vibes. Needles to say, it was a very cinematic bit that could work well with talented casting.

Back to the book, I thought that the English used in the book was very edifying. It warned me about the slipperiness of ambitious prose that led often to confusion for the reader. There is always something to be learned from a pro, by this amateur. The English used was like glass, being invisible to the mind in the very act of reading the book. Images could burgeon very well in such conditions.

The book was published in 2000, 10 years away from where the book is situated, and 11 years after the Tiananmen Square tragedy. 10 years in China is like snapping one's fingers there, but with this editing effect, the China of 1980 was a world away from that of the China in the book, set, as I said, in 1990. Maybe this is why the succeeding chapters felt so smoothly transitioned.

People say that some books were like an armchair tour guide, bringing them the flavours and local colours of the foreign country. Thing is, you can imagine what you are already aware of. I read about cats, snakes, eels being part of the Chinese gastronomy, but could not imagine the taste. The snake and the cat were, in the menu, described as dragon and tiger, which I considered with an appraised eye. Couldn't get more cultural than that.

The ordinary population of China is usually treated as a populace. Ravaged by earthquakes, invasions, dictatorships, they become hardy, knowing that the rest of the world does not care a jot about them. They are alone. They are what history and science and tradition and commerce made them. One thing is great about their literature. Their names are very easy to remember! Especially when compared to Russian literature characters.

[Whitaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to read a novel written originally in English about China and Chinese culture, you can't do better than start with this book. Qiu Xiaolong (in Chinese, the family name comes at the beginning) is not only China born and bred but, as a poet and translator of ancient Chinese Tang poetry and former teacher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is also a bona fide member of the Chinese literati. As an immigrant to the United States where he chose to stay on after the Tiananmen incident, he is, however, writing a police procedural novel for a Western audience. What you get therefore is an authentic look at modern China (not the vomit-inducing yellow-face often found in other works), steeped in Chinese cultural and literary tradition but explained for the Westerner. It's not a translation, so you don't get those awkward constructions that can arise when translating from Chinese into English. And it's a cracking police procedural to boot.

Qiu's Inspector Chen is the newly appointed head of the Shanghai Police Bureau's special case squad. The squad, itself a new creation, was formed to handle cases that have a political angle. This allows Qiu to use the crime novel genre to explore the social and political changes sweeping through China, as Chen has to conduct his investigations all the while taking care not to step too hard on powerful political toes. This makes Chen a direct literary descendent of the iconic Chinese figure, Justice Bao (包拯), a semi-historical semi-fictional personage of mythic proportions, legendary for investigating corruption in high places while being wholly incorruptible himself:


He is also, however, literary kin to characters such as Simeon's Inspector Maigret or James's Inspector Dagliesh, right down to having his own trademark quirk, in his case, being a poet and having a penchant for quoting Tang Dynasty poetry:

He went out to the balcony, but he failed to catch a glimpse of her slender figure retreating into the night. He heard only a violin from an open window above the curve of the street. Two lines from Li Shangyin's "Zither" came to his mind:

The zither, for no reason, has half of its strings broken,
One string, one peg, evoking the memory of the youthful years.

A difficult Tang dynasty poet, Li Shangyin was especially known for this elusive couplet. Certainly it was not about the ancient musical instrument. Why, all of a sudden, the lines came rushing to him, he did not know. The murder case? A young woman. A life in its prime wasted. All the broken strings. The lost sounds. Only half of its years lived. Or was there something else?

The use of literary allusions is also very much in line with classical Chinese works where such references were de rigueur to show one's learning. Here, Qiu unpacks the allusion for us, explaining its provenance and musing on the meaning of its use.

Qiu does this work of unpacking in other ways as well, and does this reasonably discretely, explaining only when he feels he has to:

Chen did not answer the question. He had a ready excuse in busily unwrapping the [dish,] beggar's chicken. It smelled wonderful. The recipe had supposedly originated when a beggar baked a soil-and-lotus-leaf-wrapped chicken in a pile of ashes. The result was an astonishing success.

But Qiu also omits explanations when these are not needed, such as in his use of four-character Chinese idioms, a quintessential feature of the writing of any educated Chinese person. In this following passage he uses the phrase 雨后春笋 [yǔhòuchūnsǔn] ("bamboo shoots after a spring rain"), used to indicate rapid and plentiful growth and equivalent to saying in English "sprang up like mushrooms":

A small fishing village during the Ming dynasty, Shanghai had developed into one of the most prosperous cities in the Far East, with foreign companies and factories appearing like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, and people pouring in from everywhere.

Chen's repeated references to Tang poetry are either your cup of tea or not, but before you decry them for being nothing more than pretentious sound and fury think of how often Western novels expressly or implicitly reference earlier foundational cultural works, all without having to directly acknowledge the debt because the reference forms part of the Western world's cultural capital. In this we are all borrowers and lenders. The only difference here is that the cultural referents Qiu is working with have to be explained to his Western audience, which he obligingly and not too disruptively does.

The references, moreover, anchor Qiu's work, setting modern China in the framework of its political and cultural past, via the use of this cultural and social resonance. And this brings me to the one aspect of this novel that pushed it from three all the way to five stars for me. A key and explicit reference in the novel is made multiple times to the great Chinese classic, 红楼梦 (hóng lóu mèng) (The Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone). Its author, Cao Xueqin, used his story of the wealthy Jia family to criticise the corruption and materialism of Chinese society in his time. This too is a running theme in Qiu's novel. Qiu's reference is not merely to recall China's historical problems with corruption and materialism, however, but to provide a counter to the message of this canonical work.

In The Dream of the Red Chamber, the protagonist, Baoyu, struggles between fulfilling his duty to his family—by successfully taking the Imperial examinations and becoming an important and wealthy court official—and his own desire to write poetry. The struggle is also mirrored in his love life. His family want him to marry Baochai, a girl with wealth and family connections whom he does not love, and he wants to marry the spiritual and artsy Daiyu, his soul mate and a poor orphan girl who the family has taken in. The story culminates with Baoyu being tricked into marrying Baochai, while Daiyu is left to die of heartache (also known as tuberculosis). Disgusted with the greed and deceit that surrounds him, the novel ends with Baoyu renouncing the material world and taking on monk's robes.

This tension between the demands of principle and idealism versus the demands of real world politick are at the heart of the mystery and its resolution. Chen does, of course, catch his murderer. Justice is done, but it also transpires that Chen's investigation has been part of a larger political game of which he was unaware. Bringing the murderer to justice has also meant victory for certain political interests, and defeat for others. In disgust, Chen contemplates quitting the police force, but ultimately changes his mind. It is this difference in response, his decision that "if you believe you can do something for your country, you should persevere. It helps a little if there are a few honest policemen around, even though it may not help much.", that marks this novel out from Cao Xueqin's own answer to the same problem.

The resolution of the crime is marked by a bitter aftertaste of reality, and Qiu's novel is an honest and telling depiction of the difficulties of living a principled but effective life in the real world rather than fulminating safely in the refuge of comforting fantasy.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Shanghai during the 1990s this is a culturally interesting crime novel highlighting the economic and political turmoil in China at a time when the old ways were clashing with the new. The author, Qiu Xialoang was born and educated in Shanghai in 1953 becoming a poet and writer and Associate Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences with an interest in English literature and translation. In 1988 he travelled to Washington to work on a book on T.S. Eliot and elected to stay in the US following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. This debut book is the first in his successful Inspector Chen Cao series, all written in English.

Chen Cao is a member of a special investigations unit that investigates crimes with political overtones. The case involves the murder of a young 'model worker' - a person revered for their work ethic, discipline and high morals. The suspect is her secret boyfriend, the son of a high ranking party official so Chen must tread carefully so as not to upset the higher echelons of the party, making sure his evidence and the suspect's motives are water tight. Even then he may be ending his career by accusing the suspect of murder if party internal security believes he has political reasons for targeting the party elite. Even though this is the 1990s, Chen seems to rely on very old fashioned techniques of investigation with have little access to forensics and only one other detective to assist in tracking down witnesses and suspects.

Since his move to the US, Qui has made many trips back to Shanghai to visit his family and observed first hand the rapid changes in Chinese society during the 1990s and his observations of the everyday life of the middle and worker classes and that of the party elite feel authentic. He clearly has a nostalgia for traditional Chinese cuisine as there are many descriptions of food preparation and consumption as well as a lot of tea drinking. In addition to being a detective, Chen is a published poet and a translator of English fiction. Qui's love of Chinese poetry (traditional and modern) is also apparent in the many quotes included in the text to illustrate Chen's musings. The imagery of these is explained for the Western reader and colour the text in the same way that English poetry or reference to pop culture is often used to inform Western writing. This makes for a very different type of murder mystery, but one that is well written with the authenticity of time and place in a changing culture.

[Carol, She's so Novel ꧁꧂ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had already read and wanted to read more in this series.

This book introduces us to Chief Inspector Chen,poet & idealist in a corrupt and changing China. Guan was a National Model Worker who appeared to have no life outside of her job & The Party. So why was she murdered?

I'm giving this one 4 very weak stars. I do like Chen as a character - in spite of it having a touch of "Women want to be with him, men want to be him," and I was interested in his world. I liked the poetry quotations.

But way too much about food and some of the writing was really quite stilted and awkward. I also thought the story dragged a bit at around the two thirds mark. I didn't feel very compelled to pick it up when I had spare time.

But again but! a startling and shattering denouement that moved rapidly (so I guess I should add pacing problems to my quibbles!)

Pretty good for a first in series I thought.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plot is hardly innovative as (yet another) young woman is murdered and her body dumped - but what makes this series opener so fascinating is the setting in 1990s Shanghai, a year after Tiananmen Square, and when the Party is still firmly in control but economic reforms are moving towards a form of market capitalism. At least one of the main character's friends has just opened his own restaurant and we see the transition between the prior system of job allocations and the emerging one where there is some choice.

And one of the themes of the book is the interpenetration and balance between various pasts and present: Inspector Chen is a poet and the story is steeped in Chinese literature with the retelling of myths and frequent quotations from classical texts. Add to that generational differences and varying experiences of China's complicated history and the result is a rich brew that has a distinctly unwestern feel in terms of the imagery of the writing and some of the value systems that underpin the story.

Chen himself is a likeable protagonist, ably helped by his assistant Yu whose wife plays an unexpected role in the investigation. And the food, one of Chen's interests, is as delicious as that of the Brunetti or Montabano books. The plotline may not hold many surprises but the nuanced depiction of late twentieth century China made this a winner for me and I shall definitely be reading on in this series.

[Dagio_maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“La giustizia era come le sfere colorate nelle mani di un prestigiatore, che cambiavano colore e forma in continuazione, sotto la luce della politica.”


Non rovino la lettura a nessuno dicendo che questo libro racconta di un mistero e che l’enigma sta nel capire chi ha ucciso una donna di nome Guan.
La compagna Guan pubblicamente conosciuta come Lavoratrice Modello e inserita in quella carovana di maschere che il Partito Comunista Cinese acclama a sostegno di concetti che possano tenere assieme e dominare la massa. Slogan che diventano ordini in un meccanismo che Xiaolong ben riassume in questa frase:
” Non è la gente che fa le interpretazioni, ma le interpretazioni che fanno la gente.”

Non rovino certo la lettura, dicevo, perché tutto ciò si evince con lampante evidenza dal titolo stesso del romanzo.
Ambientato nella Cina degli anni’90 e primo della serie che vede come protagonista principale l’ispettore capo Chen Cao, la narrazione ha il pregio principale non solo nella trama poliziesca ma altresì per aver centrato l’intento di far comprendere vari aspetti della storia e della vita quotidiana (e non) cinese.
Una riflessione, infatti, che ho fatto proprio leggendo questo libro era proprio in merito a come molti romanzi asiatici siano palesemente concepiti per un pubblico strettamente connazionale.
Spesso (non sempre ma spesso) si sente come il lettore oltre frontiera non sia considerato e dunque si fanno riferimenti e citazioni che sottintendono conoscenze per autoctoni.
Questo libro è, invece, tutto l’opposto essendo continuamente costellato da spiegazioni su usi, costumi, fatti storici e letteratura cinese. Detto così potrebbe sembrare che la narrazione sia tutto sommato una palla gigantesca ma non lo è.
Xiaolong riesce a calibrare le dosi inserendo le dotte o meno spiegazioni all’interno dei dialoghi e dunque facendo fluire tutto all’interno dell’intreccio.
Il momento storico in cui è collocata la storia è molto importante per la società cinese proprio per le conseguenze che alcune decisioni hanno avuto restituendo riverbero mondiale facilmente constatabile proprio ai giorni nostri.
Si tratta, infatti, della politica di Deng Xiaoping degli anni ‘90 che sta preparando il terreno per una nuova Cina aprendo le porte al mercato mondiale. E insieme all’economia cambia la politica che fa oscillare le posizioni acquisite dai vecchi quadri. Emergono, inoltre, le forti contraddizioni tra gli attacchi allo stile di vita borghese e occidentale e una nazione che di fatto favorisce una classe politica privilegiata in tutto mentre il popolo tira a campare…

Ben costruito anche il personaggio principale che è un poliziotto per caso poiché la sua vera natura è quella della poesia. Questo espediente permette a Xiaolong d’introdurre e citare versi classici della Letteratura Cinese impreziosendo ulteriormente il genere giallo.


Curiosità
Xiaolong dimostra essere un appassionato gourmet. L’ispettore Chen non solo segue le tracce per risolvere il caso di omicidio ma si fa attirare dagli effluvi della cucina cinese tradizionale e non. I piatti elencati sono veramente tanti e, in questo caso, possono far storcere il naso per il contenuto estraneo alla cultura occidentale (serpenti, ratti, gatti, cane, scimmie, tartarughe…).

” Chen aveva sentito dire che a Guangzhou non c’era cosa che respirasse che la gente del luogo non avesse trovato modo di trasformare in un piatto prelibato.”

[Damo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The debut novel by Qiu Xiaolong is a thoughtful and hugely interesting murder mystery set in China in 1990. In a way, the curtain behind which the closed socialist society lives is pulled back to hint at the daily lives of the people and the priorities in which all matters are dealt with. Inspector Chen heads the murder investigation and as well as working as a policeman, he’s also a poet who enjoys just a small level of notoriety.

The murder victim is a highly regarded National Model Worker, an important figure in the Party which makes this a politically sensitive case. One of the primary suspects is the son of a High Cadre member, another politically sensitive position. There is no way that Chen is going to be able to conduct his investigation without close scrutiny from a host of powerful people.

Set just after the events of Tiananmen Square, this is a story that includes deep commentary on the changing attitudes within China. This is underlined when focusing on the Party man who Chen must report to, a man known as Commissar Zhang. An old school party member, Zhang is all too aware that the attitudes and ideals of the younger Chinese people are changing and is just as aware that there is little he can do to stop it. His oversight of Chen, once an important part of the judicial process, appears now to be a superfluous act of bureaucracy.

When it comes to creating an incredibly strong sense of place that the story comes into its own. The city of Shanghai and, indeed, all of the surrounding scenes in which the story is set is brought to vivid life from the sights and sounds of the cities to the everyday habits of the local citizenry. You get a definite sense that the ordinary workers are all doing it very tough, having to come up with creative ways to ensure they put food on the table every day. This includes Chen himself who, although he has his own room, is constantly battling to stock his cupboards.

From what appeared to be a strong start, the main weakness to the story is the meandering nature of the narrative, almost as if the author has been distracted halfway through. Headway is made on the investigation to a certain extent but it’s definitely a staccato affair and requires some patience to follow it.

In the meantime, we’re treated to snippets of verse as Chen indulges his love of poetry which appears to help keep him sane. A sputtering love affair also tends to whisper at the edges of his notice but never appears important enough to capture a significant level of his attention. Fortunately, he’s surrounded by a plethora of friends and colleagues who keep the case ticking over for him.

Overall, I’d have to say I was thoroughly enthralled by the visit to a country and culture which, until now, has been completely closed off to me. I could have done with a little less of the rambling nature of the narrative but Chen has proven himself to be a tenacious and thoughtful character.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've delayed writing this review - which I know is not a good sign for the star rating. I think it's one of those difficult 3 star books. (Updated to 4) There is good and bad - and I keep trying to convince myself to overlook the bad - nope it's not working. My feminist principles are yelling from the back of my brain.
The bad stuff - way too many sexy, slim girls, with a waspy waist, pale skin, and jet-black hair flowing to the butt - yep incredible stereotypes. Even the Russian beauties at Overseas Chinese Lu's restaurant have waspy waists and flashing white thighs. I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cringe or just plain forgive him - Qiu Xiaolong, that is, because on the whole his principles are of the highest and his intentions are so good.
Our hero Chief Inspector Chen and his assistant Yu - poor guys - they have to interview so many ladies in mini-skirts, and Chen himself has no less that two love interests. The crime also is of a sexual nature. The suspect is a high-cadre son who has seduced and abused a long string of women, but his last choice has caused problems. Guan Hongying is a National Model worker. She is easily recognized by literally anyone.

The female stereotypes do tend to balance out overall, because, we have a very stern woman heading the Party Discipline Committee, Comrade Director Yao, who warns Chen about disregarding the politics of the Party of which he is a member and there is also a suave, sophisticated news reporter, Wang Feng, who offers Chen the possibility of being his mistress.

In many ways this is a striking book. I would say the detective set-up is really a frame from which Qui Xiaolong can bring the Western world up to date with the realities of Modern China. My own thin knowledge of The People's Republic has massively improved. Qui could have written a history book, but in this way the book's characters allow us to feel what it was to like to be subjected to the radical policies of Mao Zedong; the economic disaster of the Cultural Revolution, and then in 1978 a major and continuing recovery, with Deng Xiaoping's Open Door reforms.

1990, the setting of the events in the book is pivotal in that it follows the disaster of Tiananmen square, 1989. The effect of Tiananmen was to draw severe criticism of The Party and its absolute control over every aspect of life in China. Qiu draws our attention to the political climate - the Party needs to improve its public image and implements rigorous controls to maintain its Ideals... Inspector Chen's case is watched and Chen himself it subject to Internal Security. There is general discontent with the HCC - Children of the High Cadre - they are a generation enjoying the wealth and the benefits allocated to their parents - the High Cadres of the earlier revolutionary period - but without adherence to the Party's principles.

The suspicion is that Chen may be targeting this elite. Chen maintains, however, that he is interested in bringing a murderer to justice and that no one is above the law. If his investigation has brushed against current Party politics it is incidental. In other words the Party must trust Chen and likewise.

Overall I wish that Qiu Xiaolong had had the confidence to leave out ALL of the sex. This first in the series was published in 2000 and there are now 12 Inspector Chen novels. They're obviously very popular.

I liked Chen's sense of justice, and his highly developed moral sense. I also liked Chen's many quotes from the T'ang and Song dynasty poets, which he recalls easily, as his real interest is in literature. The poems help to illustrate his mood and the subtlety of his thoughts; and I've discovered that the Chinese are fantastically Romantic.

Allow me to end with Inspector Chen contemplating a poem by Matthew Arnold. Perhaps this will give a better idea of Qiu Xiaolong's vision, to bring China's long history into a kind of balance with the tumultuous events of the last century.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I'm increasing the stars because as a student of Comparative Literature myself, I understand Qiu Xiaolong's theme. Our highest morality exists in the stories that we tell or that have been told. A final quote, from Chen is one of several referrals to the wisdom of Confucius 551 - 479 BC:

"Naming is the most important thing in the world."

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

While listening to most of the book I didn't think it would be a four stars. It didn't had much that stood out and felt like it gave much of an impact. But after finishing it and let it sit for some time I do think it's a four stars. It made more of an impact than I first thought and I will definitely read more in the series

[LJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Sentence: The body was found at 4:40 p.m., on May 11, 1990, in Baili Canal, an out-of-the-way canal, about twenty miles to the west of Shanghai.

Inspector Chen Cao is a poet, translator of Western literature, including mysteries, and newly assigned as head of the Special Case Squad. The naked body of a young woman has been found in a canal. The victim, Guan Hongying, had been recognized as a National Model Worker. As Chen and Detective Yu move forward in their investigation, their primary suspect is the son of a High Cadre, one of the highest designations for the old faithful members. Chen is determined to pursue the murder case but hadn’t counted on the bureaucrats stepping in to declare it political.

This book worked for me for so many reasons. Set one year after Tiananmen Square, it is a fascinating look at a changing China caught between the old politics and the new interjecting information of China from ancient times to the time of the book’s setting.

There was an incredibly strong sense of place showing us the lives of people at every social stratum, mainly within the city of Shanghai. The details of everyday life brought both the story and the characters into being. .

The characters were so well developed, particularly Chen. Not having wanted to be a policeman there is the dichotomy of his wanting to do his job well but his love of poetry and pride when one of his poems is published. The inclusion of poetry throughout the story is so well done. But I also loved a scene where Chen went to buy a piece of jewelry for a girl friend using money he earned translating a Ruth Rendell mystery. He feels Rendell would have been pleased by his choice. The character is further enriched by the supporting characters of his partner, Yu, as you watch their relationship develop, and by others loyal to him.

If I had to say there was a weak point to the story, it would probably be the plot. At the same time, I felt there had to be all the information surrounding it or, as Western reader, none of it would have made as much sense.

For me, this debut book lays the foundation for the characters and the series. I will be very interested to see where Chen goes next. The book is on the longer side and a dense read but never was I tempted to put the book down. I highly recommend it.

DEATH OF A RED HEROINE (Pol. Proc-Insp. Chen Cao-Shanghai, China-Cont) – VG+
Xiaolong, Qiu – 1st in series
Soho Press, 2000, US Hardcover – ISBN: 9781569471937

[paper0r0ss0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per una sorta di eterogenesi dei fini, scegli un libro giallo con l'intento di badare piu' che altro al contesto e scopri invece che la trama investigativa e' di qualita'. La curiosita' iniziale era tutta rivolta allo scoprire un po' della quotidianita' cinese, quella vera. Le dinamiche sociali e relazionali, la pervasivita' del Partito, la straniante mistura di marxismo, taoismo e confucianesimo. La svolta del compagno Deng per scatenare la belva del capitalismo di stato che dagli anni novanta sta divorando il mondo. E tutto questo c'e', scritto bene e senza inutili didascalismi, calato perfettamente nella trama. Una trama che come accennavo, vede un filo giallo di buona qualita' che rende il libro nel complesso davvero godibile.

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

How good did the blurb sound? A detective novel that takes place in Communist China! Unfortunately, and despite almost every other person I know enjoying it, I found this novel pretty underwhelming. Proof, I guess, of just how subjective reading can be. It’s not a ‘bad’ book, it had a lot of promise, and it picked up in the middle after a slow start. But in the end it just wasn’t for me and I can mainly pinpoint this to four things: way too much exposition and introspection on unimportant details, obvious clues going unnoticed for far too long, descriptions and portrayals of female characters that consistently skeeved me out, and a main character that was hard to feel anything for.

So I guess I’ll start on the overabundance of exposition. The book is absolutely full of details about life in 90s Communist Shanghai. Which would be fascinating (and still is fascinating at times) if was slipped into the story with a bit more skill. As it is the author seems so concerned his audience won’t understand Chinese words or concepts that instead of simply letting them work out the meaning from the context he has to stop the story to explain them. Every, single, time. Which ends up creating a disjointed flow and making me feeling incredibly talked down to. I may not know a lot about communist China and I certainly want> to learn more but that doesn’t mean I want to be spoon-fed it like a baby. Despite all the information given about Shanghai here I never for one moment felt I had a grip of the city, like I could see it in my mind’s eye as I was reading. It felt like listening to someone who had been on holiday there talk about it (without photos), or sitting in on an informal evening lecture, rather than being transported there yourself.

I mean, information is all very good, but sometimes you've just get on with the story. If I don’t understand some minor detail I’ll do the same thing I would do for a book set in Britain or the US (and I frequently don’t understand geographic or cultural references in books set in the USA); I’ll grab a dictionary or open Wikipedia, and look it up. China is not fantasyland where the author needs to explain concepts and show off their world-building – it’s a real place, the information is out there if people want to go looking for more detail. And frankly even if this was set in a fantasyland where I couldn’t look things up I would still find the infodumping poorly timed and overused. Yes, Communist China is very interesting, but either get better at integrating your information into the story or save the explanations for the stuff that matters.

Maybe it’s a silly thing to moan about, the information on 90s China seems to be what most other reviews really loved about this book, but for me it mostly just spoilt the pacing. I just keep thinking that, if this had been written for a Chinese audience, with the assumption that the readers had a basic understanding of the setting, it would have been a much much stronger and better flowing novel (and it’s not as if relevant details couldn’t be put into notes at the end – translated fiction and old classics have endnotes for this sort of stuff all the time). As it is it’s too catered to ‘person who knows nothing about China’ and busy interrupting itself to explain the setting for it to actually get on with the story.

And it has a similar problem when it comes to portraying politics, or human emotion in general for that matter. It’s almost didactic in places, we’re spoon-fed exactly what we’re meant to think of the Chinese Communist Party. Every time something happens Chen’s explanation of the ‘political reasons’ is never far away, even when it’s just repeating the same thing we’ve been informed 12millionty times before or when it’s so fucking obvious it’s not hard to work out for yourself (I’m thinking particularly here of the final chapter and a prominent ‘well duh!’ moment for me). Trust me to work a little out on my own please, I already spotted all the clues to the mystery chapters before your detective after all.

Which brings me neatly onto my second objection: the mystery really wasn’t all that mysterious. A female body is found in a rural canal. Naked, strangled and wrapped in a plastic bag. A post-mortem reveals that she had sex shortly before her death, that her stomach contains caviar, and that her body shows no sign of a struggle. So what is the only hypothesis do the police originally draw from this? That she was raped and murdered by a random stranger. It takes about six more chapters for Chen to finally go ‘caviar! That’s expensive and well beyond her means. She must have eaten out with somebody!’ and when he does everybody is amazed by his deductive reasoning. The same deductive reasoning that told him earlier that ‘She could not have been romantically involved at the time of her death. There was no privacy possible in [her] dorm building’ – because apparently a couple is only allowed to have sex in the girl’s dormroom and meeting up elsewhere is totally out of the question! The list of overlooked clues could go on and on – but eventually they realise them and discover their suspect at around the halfway point. The rest of the book is mostly trying to prove that hedunit and working on discovering the motive against some half-hearted pressure to stop from higher up. In terms of a ‘murder mystery’ it’s rather lacking.

What really irritated me though was the way the female characters were presented. In part this is of course deliberate – the investigation unearths an underworld of misogyny, 'western bourgeois decadence', sexual blackmail, and both sexual and emotional abuse. The killer’s attitude towards women is truly vile. I expect to be disgusted at that though, and I expect to be irritated by the way that women were viewed in communist China (and not just there) as primarily ‘wives’, ‘Party members’ or ‘wanton‘ (seriously, I should have done a tally for the amount of times the author used/misused the word 'wanton'). What I didn’t expect was to be so utterly skeeved out by the protagonists attitude towards women as well. Oh he’s not a vile abuser like the killer, obviously, not by any means. He doesn’t overtly sexualise and dehumanise women as nothing but objects – but he does that sickening overly romantic ‘poetic’ praise, 'women are gentle flowers' shit which is almost just as dehamanising and creepy. The way he describes women’s appearance in such flowery ways (often accompanied by a Chinese love poem that the woman reminds him of), or the way the author constantly feels the need to point out when a woman’s t-shirt is ‘tight’ or her blouse is ‘almost transparent’ or that her nipples are showing through the fabric. Stop it, stop it, stop it.

The scene where Chen first meets his love interest is just terrible. He heroicly catches her as she trips over and the narration basically says that she ‘need not have been embarrassed’ because Chen found her attractive and didn’t mind the physical contact. Not only cliché but gross as well. Like, my embarrassment at tripping should be directly tied to whether the guy who helps me out finds me attractive? NO. Then there’s the scene where he realises the witness he’s about to interview is a prostitute, thinks about showing his ID card, but then decides he’ll have an exotic Japanese foot massage first. Yuck. Meanwhile his coworker Yu is out interviewing another potential witness and when she doesn’t want to speak to the police he falsely claims he has photos of her having sex and will release them to her employers. Again: yuck. Oh and then I’m meant to buy it when he is all outraged that her ex made exactly the same threats. I wouldn’t want eiher of these men as policemen.

I think I’m meant to find Chen an intellectual romantic but I just can’t. Yes, society seems to have taken a collective shit on women in this book, but Chen’s analysis is often totally misogynistic as well, basically amounting to ‘if women aren't married with children their lives must be miserable’. In part it is just a reflection of the time, I can aknowledge that, and that would actually have been interesting to explore. But the way that Chen is so very obviously meant to be sympathetic and seems to be almost an author avatar at times (they’re both poets and members of the Chinese Writers’ Association) made his interactions with women super awkward. And quite frankly I just can’t fell comfortable with a character when the third-person limited perspective is so skeevey.

Which, as I started off saying, all contributes to me not feeling very much in the way of interest in Chief Inspector Chen. He’s meant to be a bright young thing. An intellectual young police officer with a promising political career ahead and a private yearning for a ‘normal’ family life. Also everybody but everybody in the book thinks he’s awesome and freely tells everyone else how awesome and 'promising’ he is. But his constant poetical digressions slow an already slow book down and did nothing for me, and he seemed almost completely disinterested in the case (despite the narration frequently trying to convince me that it had taken over his life). And a disinterested detective makes for a disinterested reader. There’s no real urgency to solve the murder for most of the book, just endless descriptions about the changing structure of the communist party. And if the author and the main character can’t seem to bring themselves to care about the actual murder case the book is meant to be about, why should I?

Having said all that – and I realise it’s a lot of negaive stuff, more so than I expected when I started this review – I’ll repeat again: it’s not a ‘bad’ book. Lots of people far more clever than I am think it’s a very good book, it just contains several elements that personally irritate and/or bore me. There was enough of a good idea here and, when the book finally picked up, enough good writing, that I’m not going to write Qiu Xiaolong off just yet. Perhaps a lot of what I disliked can be ascribed to first-novel-nerves and the concept, if not always the execution, was very interesting. I’m not exactly going to go hunting down the rest of this series or anything, but if I see one of them on the library shelf and I feel in the right mood I might just give it a go. Now that the setting's been established he might start focussing more on the story.

2.5 stars from me – solidly in the middle. Didn’t particularly like it, didn’t really dislike it.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the author got the balance just right. The characters are interesting, the settings enjoyable to imagine, and I enjoyed the descriptive writing. The pacing was good and I was fascinated by the details of another culture other than my own. There were so many literary references that I enjoyed, too many to list. I tried, but then, I decided to sit back and enjoy it! It was a case of the right book at the right time. This was both a new author and a new narrator for me and I will seek out more of this series and this combination. I thought the narrator, David Shih was a perfect fit and I really enjoyed listening to his enactment of this wonderful novel.

Here's one example of the descriptive writing I so enjoyed: "gazing at the misty horizon through a window, her face framed by her tangled hair, a cloud of velvety cattail blurred in a distant field."

"Time is a bird. It perches, and it flies."

Then, there were the Chinese proverbs, that were fun to discover, such as: "An old horse knows the way."

[Tanabrus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consigli, quelli buoni. Svariati anni fa, a un Salone, un amico mi consigliò questa serie.
Con minuscolo ritardo l'ho cominciata, finalmente, e posso dire che il consiglio era totalmente giusto.

Molto interessante l'ambientazione, la Cine degli anni 90 con l'apertura all'occidente, la situazione di Hong Kong, il passato ingombrante e un futuro ancora difficile da prevedere, sotto tutte le spinte differenti cui era sottoposto
Interessante anche il protagonista, il "giovane non più giovane" Chen, ispettore dei casi speciali e con un possibile buon futuro in politica (cosa, lì e allora, non era politica?), studi di letteratura alle spalle, un poliziotto poeta ancora in cerca della sua strada.
Un poliziotto onesto e integerrimo, come Yu e Vecchio Cacciatore, in un ambiente pieno di arrivisti e opportunisti. Come sempre del resto, e come ovunque.

La storia è buona, forse un po' troppo da deus ex machina la risoluzione ma era anche la cosa più probabile e realistica, in quella situazione .
Una serie da continuare.

[Kathy Chumley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came for the mystery. Stayed for the history.

Death of a Red Heroine is at once a detective story and the story of China's changes that took place in the early 1990s. From what I understand the author wanted to explore the changes as capitalism began to creep into socialist China and felt that a detective novel was the best way to get it across. Qui said a cop walks around, talks to people, and considers the context in which the murder occurred.

If you're expecting a straight up detective novel, this isn't it. Because of the history lessons Qui inserted throughout the story, it is sometimes slow, and catching the killer (who is identified early on) takes time. That doesn't make it uninteresting. I'm generally not a fan of expository writing (OMG, no Dan Brown for me!) but in this novel it works. Sprinkled throughout the story are lessons in Chinese history, government, poetry, and literature.

The author, like his main character, is a poet and translator. Because of this, we're treated to some lovely Chinese poetry throughout the novel - both ancient and modern poetry. We also learn a good deal about Chinese novels, the ones children grow up reading and the ones all college students study. This is something that as an American, I know little about and I appreciated the lessons I got from the story.

As for the story itself, a young National Model Worker is found murdered. At first I thought that meant she was a model, but apparently she's a model - worker. One that other workers should look up to. Chief Inspector Chen and his (sergeant?) begin investigating her murder and hit roadblocks at every turn, mostly due to politics and "how this will look".

Some things are universal. They transcend time, political systems, countries, and cultures. Powerful people can sometimes literally get away with murder. Children of powerful people enjoy a privilege that children of "regular" people do not. Politics at work can prevent honest people from doing their jobs properly. When these truths are added to a country that is rapidly changing - whether for better or worse depends on who you ask - it makes for an interesting story.

Chief Inspector Chen only wants to solve the murder of a young woman. Who his investigation leads to doesn't matter to him as long as it leads to the killer. That is, until higher ups intervene and make his job almost impossible. The difference between how this would play out in a democracy and how it plays out in Communist China is striking. There is so much at stake if he continues trying to solve the case. And yet he continues.

In the end, The Party makes everything look like they intended the outcome all along. The case gets solved though they shut Chen out of the final investigation (and the trial is quick and deadly). At least Chen is satisfied that a killer didn't go free, and especially not because of his family connections. He and his second in command grow closer as each realizes the other is a truly honest cop. And Chen's mother, who isn't really thrilled with his choice of profession, is proud of her only son.

I'm sure I'll read more of this series but I won't gobble it up like I do some series. If the others are as slow as this one, I will read them now and then.

[Patrizia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poeta, traduttore di gialli occidentali come il suo autore, l’ispettore capo Chen si ritrova a dirigere una squadra speciale del dipartimento di polizia a Shanghai. Fare il poliziotto non è una sua scelta, il suo sogno sarebbe occuparsi di letteratura a tempo pieno, ma il Partito ha deciso diversamente.
Siamo in Cina negli anni ‘90. La Rivoluzione Culturale è un ricordo recente, che ha segnato la vita di molti. Adesso, con la politica delle Porte Aperte, tira un vento nuovo. Le condizioni dei cinesi sono leggermente migliorate, ma le loro esistenze sono ancora rigidamente regolamentate. Difficile avere un appartamento, si vive in condomini dormitorio, con un bagno per piano e un posto per un fornello nel corridoio. Nelle stanze, piccole, spesso vive un’intera famiglia.
È in questo contesto che l’ispettore capo Chen e il suo collega Yu si imbattono in un caso di omicidio.
Quella che all’inizio si presenta come un’indagine complicata dalla mancata identificazione della vittima, diventerà un vero e proprio caso politico. Anche la giustizia è subordinata alla politica, va perseguita nell’interesse supremo del partito, non deve turbare la precaria stabilità da poco ristabilita.
Ben scritto, ben contestualizzato, è un giallo classico scorrevole e gradevole.

[Sourojit Das · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice well-balanced read about a police investigation in China. Subtly criticising the one-party rule and everything that it stands for. Original treatment and a keen sense of day to day life inside the bamboo curtain makes this book a nice read.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of two parts, completely separate and wonderfully woven together.

The first part to the book is centred around Comrade Chief Inspector Chen Cao and his investigation of National Model Worker Guan Hongying, murdered and dumped in a canal. Set in the early '90s just after the infamous Tiananmen Square protests of '89 at a time of change for The Chinese Communist Party. Chen finds he is fighting not only to find the killer, but fighting against his peers and The Party.

Strangely, the story was (for me at least) almost inconsequential. What grabbed me was the way the author captured life in Shanghai, from the mobile food vendors sardine-like housing to the sense of foreboding at saying doing the wrong thing in the eyes of The Party.

I picked this as part of a A to Z author challenge and had never heard of him before. I now look forward to reading more of his work.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Murder in Shanghai...

When the body of a young woman is found in a canal, Inspector Chen of the Special Cases unit decides to take on the case, initially simply because his subordinate, Detective Yu, was the only detective available to attend the crime scene. But, once the body is identified – in itself no easy task in a country as huge and populous as China – it transpires the victim is Guan Hongying, a national model worker: a title that denotes membership of the Communist Party and a position as a figurehead and public role model for workers. So the case is indeed special, and Chen will have to try to find the murderer without revealing anything about Guan’s life that may tarnish her reputation or that of the Party.

Qiu Xiaolong is Chinese, but left the country following the Tiananmen Square protests, and now lives in America. He writes in English, and as well as being a novelist, he is a poet, a translator and a literary critic. All of these elements feed into this novel, making it an intriguing mix of insider/outsider writing. As an insider, his depiction of Shanghai and the lives of the people there in the 1990s is fascinating and detailed, describing food, clothing, customs and the rapidly changing face of Chinese life at a point where capitalism was beginning to be encouraged after years of strict communism, but where the state still had a stranglehold on every aspect of life. As an outsider, he is quite clearly writing for a Western audience, explaining things that would need no explanation for a Chinese readership, and one has to bear in mind that he is to some degree a dissident, and therefore by definition not an uncritical admirer of the political regime in force in China at that point in time.

However, I felt that he gave a surprisingly balanced picture of the regime, resisting the temptation to make it seem even more repressive than it actually was, and giving credit for some of the positive aspects of it. He also shows that many, perhaps most, people support the regime, even though they grumble about some of the difficulties and inequalities that exist within it. I thought it was a wise decision too to set the book back in 1990, just at the time that he left Shanghai for the West, so that the city he is describing is still the one he knew rather than a researched version of the present. It’s another advantage to the western reader that his faultless fluency in English means there is none of the clunkiness or occasional lack of clarity that often accompanies even the best of translations.

All this description makes the book longer than the average crime novel, but it’s so interesting and well done, and incorporated so well into the story, that I found it didn’t slow the pace to any significant degree. The underlying story is excellent, as Chen and Yu delve deep into Guan’s life, finding that she had her own secrets that didn’t fit the model image she presented to Party and public. The plot takes us deep into the culture of Party privilege, and casts a great deal of light on how the current society has developed and changed during the long years of upheaval that have marked the various stages of the Chinese revolution. But it’s also a human story, of a young woman trying to live her life in the harsh glare of publicity, of love and sex and abuse, of corruption and power.

Inspector Chen is the main character, and Qiu fleshes him out excellently, giving him Qiu’s own expertise in poetry, both Chinese and western. Chen is himself a poet, but unlike, for instance, PD James’ Adam Dalglish, he hasn’t chosen for himself an unlikely second role as policeman – Chen has been allocated his job by the Party and has no real option but to obey or to lose any hope of status and advancement, or perhaps even to mark himself out as a dissident with all the dangers that entails. Again, Qiu doesn’t overplay this aspect – Chen is embedded in the existing culture, and while he might chafe at the strict rules governing his life at some points, he largely accepts them and tries to work within them. Detective Yu is equally well drawn – lower down the social scale, he allows us to see another level of the hierarchy and the control of the Party extending into people’s lives. He’s married, and in the latter part of the book his wife comes to the fore, giving us a glimpse of the life of a traditional wife and mother, while Chen’s love interest is a modern young journalist, showing the changes that are taking place for women too at this time.

The book is laced with quotations from classic Chinese poetry and surprisingly this works brilliantly at helping the western reader understand the cultural underpinnings of this society, and of reminding us, who are too ready to look down on any society that doesn’t slavishly follow the western democratic model (which is working out so well, isn’t it? 😉), that China has a rich cultural heritage far, far more ancient than our own.

I enjoyed this as a crime novel, but even more as a fascinating insider depiction of China at a turning point in its political journey, and as a revealing portrait of the lives of the people of Shanghai. I look forward to reading more in the series. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[L.A. Starks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read on the recommendation of Tom Nolan, WSJ mystery/thriller reviewer. This is one to read mainly for the setting and time: 1990s China just as it is changing shape. Very sympathetic characters--the poet/police officer is interesting. The politics are illuminating, very of-its-time China (Kafka, or maybe just like politics anywhere) but with reference to Tiananmen Square, a crab feast, 20 families to a building, "dawn of a new age" (or is it?) the high cadres, etc. Look especially for the sweet moments mid-book about Yu and his wife.

Highly, highly recommended.

[Maddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death of a Red Heroine is an unusual and rather extraordinary book set in Shanghai, China, in the 1990s. A police officer and his friend are ostensibly patrolling the Suzhou River. In reality, they are meeting each other for the first time in 20 years and fishing off the boat. However, their reunion is marred by the discovery of a dead body. What transpires is an investigation that exposes us to the culture and societal norms of a place that is quite unknown to most people in the Western hemisphere.

The case is assigned to Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police Bureau. Chen is unusual in a few respects. First of all, he has been on the fast track in the department. Since he has been sponsored by an influential politician, he has risen in the ranks far more quickly than is normal and there is some resentment in the department because of that. In addition, Chen is an accomplished poet. His poems and those of other Chinese writers are scattered through the book, lending it a literary overlay that elevates a standard mystery.

As the investigation proceeds, Chen painstakingly builds the case against the most likely suspect. However, he is unable to arrest the person in question because he is a High Cadre Child, the son of a person high in the political system. These people are basically untouchable due to their position in society. Chen’s very livelihood is threatened by his persistence in following through with the case. The victim also presents an interesting mass of contradictions. She was a woman by the name of Guan who was known as a National Model Worker, a poster girl for political correctness, an embodiment of the Party’s propaganda, a woman with no personal life and beyond reproach. But there is more to her than meets the eye. Throughout the book, Chen has to balance the need for finding the truth with the political needs of the Party.

As the narrative unfolds, the reader is exposed to a way of life that Westerners would find most repressive. In what is a comical comment, many of the characters express that they have great freedom; after all, “it is the 90s”. The 90s of Shanghai are quite different from the 90s of the Western world. Individuals have very little freedom in their lives. Housing is assigned by work units based on an annual housing quota. Families of two or three generations are squeezed into one single room of 12 square meters. Many of these lifestyle events grew out of the Chairman Mao regime, when educated youths (Red Guards) were sent to the countryside to be reeducated by the lower and middle-poor peasants. Upon their release from the program, they were assigned to jobs not of their own choosing. In many cases, a husband and wife might work at locations that are hours apart from one another.

The book was a masterful first effort with only a few flaws. The book proceeded at a very slow pace and tended toward redundancy. The inclusion of the poetry was overdone, and the language was at times awkward. Characterization is Xiaolong’s forte, along with establishing a strong sense of place. The scenes with his underling, Detective Yu, and his family bring the book alive.

The most interesting aspect of the book in addition to the cultural details was the internal conflict of the lead character between what was right and what was required. Those who are successful in the regime put the Party and its needs above everything else, including personal morality. Chen struggles with the devastating possibility of losing his career or betraying his own integrity.

The ending is a stunner. What feels like justice may very well be something else. An impressive debut, fascinating both in its setting and its characterization.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good mystery. Complicated, the ending uncertain, but the clues to figure it out are all there.
Depth of setting. I could smell and taste so many foods! I felt like I could see the characters' surroundings! The author wove Chinese culture throughout everything. Wonderful.
Deep, complex characters. I loved the two main ones, for different reasons.
The author's knowledge of Western and Chinese poetry, as well as Chinese history, was incredible. He also wove both those things all throughout the story.

CWs:
A small bit of cursing.
Sex was mentioned frequently all throughout, both necessarily for the investigation and not.
Sex scene.
Several sexual descriptions.

[Brittany McCann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot was going on in this one, and at times it felt long.

It was a great Chinese cultural book, and many things that seemed slow were culturally appropriate.

I learned a lot about author Qiu Xiaolong, and it is easy to see that his own life inspired some of this.

Inspector Chen Cao was interesting, and the political intrigue was also on point with the time period.

I will read more in this series.

3.5 rounded up.

[Grace Tjan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot to be liked in this debut novel, set in post-Tiananmen Shanghai, where people still cook in communal kitchens, personal phones (landlines!) are a rare privilege, and private enterprises are just beginning to sprout like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Qiu Xiaolong, a Shanghai born-and-bred émigré, ably --- and at times evocatively --- captures the sights and sounds of his native city for a foreign audience, while sprinkling his narrative (originally written in English) with just enough tidbits of Tang/Song poetry and allusions to The Dream of The Red Chamber (one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature --- five if you count the much-maligned The Golden Lotus or Jin Pingmei --- and also the one that I never seem to be able to finish) to give authentic cultural touches to what is essentially pulp fiction. In this respect, he is similar to wuxia writers such as Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng who purposely embed nuggets of Chinese culture in their sprawling swordsman epics. As Qiu writes in English, he explains these allusions, but restrains himself so that they don't turn into clunky info dumps that clutter up the police procedural routine of the story. That said, the police procedural aspect is the weakest part of this novel. The mystery is hardly mysterious and Inspector Chen treats it almost like an afterthought, to be indulged in after he is done with his poetic, gastronomic and romantic pursuits. Likewise, Qiu seems to be much more interested in writing a social commentary about, among others, 'educated youths' during the Cultural Revolution, corruption among high-ranking cadres and urban communal housing, than a mystery. The resolution of the tepid murder 'mystery', as well as Inspector Chen's political problems, is extremely abrupt and seems to come from nowhere. Obviously, Qiu is trying to make a political point here, but it seems to be a pretty ham-fisted one.

The main ingredients of this first novel ---Tang poetry, Chinese culture, both traditional and modern, social commentary on contemporary China, mystery, romance --- are interesting and hopefully Qiu will be able to make more of them in subsequent books.

[Alfonso D'agostino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ho appena finito di leggere un giallo cinese.

Ok, detta così fa un po’ ridere. Giallo, cinese.

Mentirei se non descrivessi la tentazione come quasi irresistibile: pronto ad approdare in Estremo Oriente per il mio giro del mondo letterario (qui l’elenco di nazioni visitate), il gioco di parole veniva facile facile facile. E, ovviamente, non mi dispiaceva affatto l’idea di godermi un genere letterario molto mio con sfumature diverse da quelle europee od occidentali in genere.

Da questo punto di vista, La misteriosa morte della compagna Guan non ha tradito le mie aspettative: pur essendo il prodotto di un emigrato (Qiu Xiaolong, da anni negli States, scrive in inglese), il romanzo offre delle peculiarità sufficientemente intriganti da condurre fino al termine delle sue 543 pagine.

Prima fra tutte, il suo protagonista: Chen Cao è un poliziotto decisamente atipico, dedito alle indagini e alla poesia. La pubblicazione di un suo componimento su una popolare rivista a tiratura nazionale gli regala la stessa soddisfazione di un mistero risolto. Nel suo sviluppo, la narrazione si perde spesso in citazioni poetiche: un aspetto che stupisce nelle prime cento pagine, diviene atteso nelle successive duecento, rompe un po’ i maroni in quelle successive.

La stessa trama, anche se caratterizzata da un omicidio torbido, si sviluppa con una certa lentezza asiatica: non aspettatevi un divenire contraddistinto da azione o colpi di scena. Siamo più vicini – al netto delle inevitabili e gigantesche differenze – a un Wallander con gli occhi a mandorla.

E’ un buon modo per lanciare uno sguardo su un paese (enorme) alle prese con una serie di difficili convivenze: quella tra un sistema politico pervasivo e dittatoriale che cerca di conservare i suoi privilegi e le spinte moderniste della massa, insieme alla curiosa necessità di mediare tradizioni antichissime e prime pretese di contemporaneità. E’ questo, di gran lunga, l’aspetto più interessante del volume.

---- http://capitolo23.com/2017/01/05/la-m... ---

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was recommended to me as a way of understanding the HCC (children of the high cadre communist party members) and the changes that have ocurred in modern China. It is a murder mystery set in Shanghai in the 1990s during Deng's capitalist reform. Incredibly interesting and well written. The main character, Inspector Chen is a poet (shades of PD James) and a man searching for justice. I'm hooked on this author now and understand there are more.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a suspenseful thriller, stop right here. This is not one of those, and it's a long book. We are looking at plodding detective work here; one small clue at a time. And we get great insight into the Chinese culture and politics during the 90's. I love historical fiction like this. It was a slow read, but well worth the ride.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman's naked body in a black plastic trash bag is pulled from an out-of-the-way canal outside Shanghai one May day in 1990. Eventually identified as Guan Hongying, her name meaning 'Red Heroine', a national model worker for the Communist Party. The case is assigned to a special unit of the homicide department of the Shanghai Police Bureau, one headed by the newly promoted Chief Inspector Chen Cao. Chen is the young rising star in the police bureau as well as in the communist party. He's also a published poet, a rising star in contemporary modern poetry, one with an education in comparative literature, and a noted translater of classic mysteries from English to Chinese. What quickly is evident in this debut is that Chen's own struggles to be modern, to be a homicide detective of note and also a poet, but also to be loyal to and uphold the party's doctrine, are the core not just of Death of a Red Heroine, but of the entire series. The tension is political - as it applies to Chen and his career, his freedom.

The time is a year after Tiananmen Square, when the Party and Deng are promoting a more open China while upholding the core principles set down by Mao and the old cadre, and preventing corruption from western bourgeois influences. It's a period that provides an exceptionally rich background for detective fiction that is more about the development of the characters - here Inspector Chen and his assistant Detective Yu - than it really is about the murder itself.

The author came to the US in 1989, and in addition to this series, he's a poet. The novel is rich with poetry - that of the author as Inspector Chen as well as classic Chinese - with Chen particularly using it to inform his thinking, his impressions. The author's writing style is reflective of much of the translated east asian detective fiction I've read - a little stilted, sentence constructs a touch different - which also sets it apart from American and British detective fiction.

[Georgiana 1792 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un giallo ambientato nella Cina degli anni 90, con la compagna Guan Hongying, la vittima, che è una famosa Lavoratrice Modello della Nazione, ma che - come scopriranno l’ispettore capo Chen Cao e l'investigatore Yu Guangming della polizia di Shanghai - nasconde una doppia vita, in cui ha una relazione clandestina con un uomo sposato, figlio di un alto quadro dirigente.
Pur avendo individuato quasi subito il colpevole, Chen e Yu non hanno ancora scoperto il suo movente, quindi continuano a indagare, anche se a Chen vengono messi i bastoni tra le ruote, visto che si muove tra personaggi del partito inattaccabili.
Si parla con disprezzo di FGG, figli di gao gan, i figli di papà che non sanno nulla della vita piena di sacrifici del cittadino medio cinese.
Qiu Xialong riesce a trasmettere l'atmosfera della Cina degli anni 90 e la figura del suo ispettore capo/poeta Chen Cao con tutti i personaggi che gli gravitano intorno è affascinante, tanto che continuerò sicuramente a leggere questa serie.