A Loyal Character Dancer

July 1, 2002
Anthony Prize–winner Qiu's second Inspector Chen mystery (after 2000's Death of a Red Heroine)
offers an intriguing if somewhat labored glimpse of Chinese life in a period of evolution from communism to a more westernized culture. Former dancer and party loyalist Wen Liping has vanished just when she was to leave for the U.S. to join her husband, a key witness against a smuggling ring suspected of importing aliens to America. The same day higher authorities refer this case to Chen, who is a likable senior police agent with a love of literature, a badly mutilated body turns up in Shanghai's Bund Park. It takes many pages and train trips around China for Chen, in the company of visiting U.S. Marshal Catherine Rohn, before the two cases are finally linked, but the wait is worth it. Punctuated by proverbs from Confucius and ancient and modern Chinese poetry, Chen's reports show how he and Catherine gradually learn of Wen's unhappy past—being programmed as a child to dance holding a "Loyalty" placard for Mao's Red Guards, later suffering brutal abuse by her husband. The more unsavory elements of modern Chinese society are revealed, from prostitution houses masking as karaoke clubs to vicious rival triads battling for turf, while materialism at its worst overcomes traditional values. Qiu's writing style can be somewhat stilted, and dialogue occasionally resembles "partyspeak," but the characters manage to achieve an engaging realism and charm, even while showing the underside of China in transition.

July 1, 2002
In " Death of a Red Heroine" (2000), Xiaolong" "introduced us to a refreshingly complex new character in police procedurals: Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau. Chen Cao majored in English literature in college, but he was assigned to the police under the cadre system. Cao rankles under authority but never rebels, except for pursuing his own modernist poetry and translations of Western literature. Chen's closest cousin may be Stuart Kaminsky's Chief Inspector Rostnikov of the Moscow Police. Both work within systems they know are corrupt and changeable, counting on their own moral compasses to steer them right. In the second Inspector Chen novel, Chen pulls diplomatic detail in the first Chinese American joint action against illegal immigration. Everything hinges on Chen's finding the disappeared wife of a refugee. He works with an American woman from the U. S. Marshal's Office, and the sexual tension between them ratchets up the suspense. Engrossing insights into contemporary China in an intricate mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2002
Inspector Chen (Death of a Red Heroine) of the Shanghai police tries to figure out the fate of a missing woman, a former Red Guard member who may be in trouble with her husband's criminal colleagues. Solid and eventful.