An elaborate and satisfying souffle of mystery, history, and poetry.
A bureaucrat and man of letters probes the death of a notorious poet and courtesan in seventh-century China.
Dee Renjie, newly appointed Imperial Circuit Supervisor of the Tang Empire, has no objection to being called Judge Dee, though this moniker is more reflective of his position within the complicated imperial court than of his erudition and achievements. Indeed, the contemplative Dee bears a strong resemblance to Qiu's Inspector Chen, the law enforcement officer with an artistic soul who has maneuvered through the minefield of the Chinese Communist Party while solving crimes over a dozen novels. Judge Dee becomes obsessed with the case of Xuanji, a beautiful, promiscuous courtesan and poet arrested for the beating death of Ning, a maidservant whom she’s buried in the backyard. Though she hasn’t been convicted of manslaughter, Xuanji remains incarcerated and is considered a murderer. Dee’s probe begins at a monastery, aided by the appropriately named monk Nameless. Xuanji’s poems provide breadcrumbs on the investigative trail. Mysticism hangs over the case in the oft-mentioned spirit of the black fox. More murders convince Dee of Xuanji’s innocence and fuel his hunt for a solution. His prison meeting with the enigmatic Xuanji is both frustrating and exhilarating. A lengthy appendix provides many more poems by the real-life Xuanji, and a postscript lays out the tangled genesis of this series debut, inspired by both history and the Judge Dee novels of Dutch author Robert Van Gulik. Qiu's ultimate homage is presenting this novel as the work of Inspector Chen.
An elaborate and satisfying souffle of mystery, history, and poetry.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7278-5081-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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