Head First

Yellowthread Street #11

by William Marshall

When a series of dismembered bodies begin turning up on the Hong Kong shores, Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer and company search for the solution in mainland China where all the deceased died

Genres: Mystery

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

William Marshall (or William Leonard Marshall) (born 1944, Australia) is an Australian author, best known for his Hong Kong-based "Yellowthread Street" mystery novels, some of which were used as the basis for a British TV series.

Reviews

[Matthew Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there were any sort of justice in the world, Marshall would be a household name worldwide. He so thoroughly moves beyond what many mysteries confine themselves in terms of character and motivation that his books make so many others seem flat, dry, cardboard, fake. Genius.

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a wonder that the detectives and constables of the Yellowthread Street Constabulary, Hong Bay District, Hong Kong, solve any cases at all. Especially when you consider that their cases are the stuff that nightmares are made of, at least nightmares of sleeping policemen – dismembered inhabitants of coffins used to transport…something out of China, incendiary mail bags investigated by undercover officers afflicted with delusions of Holmes and Watson, fem fatales from the Chinese Secret Service quoting Thoreau over the phone, endangered butterfly wings and dangerous postcards, stealthy killer soldiers stealing from the dead while confronting ghosts and demons, and all the history of Colonial Britain and Communist China intersecting each other on the constabulary’s doorstep. And yet they do solve their cases, gloriously, heroically, and in ways that saner folk would never attempt. Hong Bay has also about it a surreal and nightmarish quality, as if it exists in a dreamland just on the border of the real world Hong Kong. Adding to that feeling is Marshall’s lyrical narrative and idiosyncratic dialogue, almost as if he is pulling us, not through a novel, but an epic poem in narrative form. Yet another great tale from this sadly departed master of the genre.

[Sandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my favorite police procedural series, set in Hong Kong a few years before the Chinese takeover.