A Loyal Character Dancer - Hardcover

Xiaolong, Qiu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569473013 ISBN 13: 9781569473016

Publisher: Soho Press, 2002

Synopsis

Inspector Chen’s mentor in the Shanghai Police Bureau has assigned him to escort U.S. Marshal Catherine Rohn. Her mission is to bring Wen, the wife of a witness in an important criminal trial, to the United States. Inspector Rohn is already en route when Chen learns that Wen has unaccountably vanished from her village in Fujian. Or is this just what he is supposed to believe? Chen resents his role; he would rather investigate the triad killing in Shanghai’s beauteous Bund Park. But his boss insists that saving face with Inspector Rohn has priority. So Chen Cao, the ambitious son of a father who imbued him with Confucian precepts, must tread warily as he tries once again to be a good cop, a good man, and also a loyal Party member.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author

Qiu Xiaolong, a prizewinning poet and critic in China, now teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His critically acclaimed Inspector Chen mystery series has sold over a million copies and has been published in twenty languages.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

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.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Soho Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1569473013
• ISBN 13: 9781569473016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360