Review of A Loyal Character Dancer by Qui Xiaolong (Sceptre, 2002)

It is the early 1990s and Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is a talented cop and an accomplished poet, with political connections that mean he is on a fast track to a senior position.  On an early morning visit to the Bund Park a body is discovered in the undergrowth, covered with eighteen axe wounds.  Just as Chen starts to investigate he is called away and assigned to chaperone US Marshall Catherine Rohn who is arriving to accompany a former dancer and party loyalist Wen Liping to the United States, where her husband has turned state witness against a triad gang who are running an illegal immigrant trafficking racket.  However, Wen has disappeared from her rural village in Fujian.  Chen dispatches Detective Yu to the province to hunt for her, whilst he stays in Shanghai to stall the American marshall and to present a favourable view of the country just a few years after the Tiananmen Square protest.  It soon becomes clear that Wen is being pursued by a triad gang intent on preventing her from travelling to the US and Chen gets further involved in the hunt for her, taking Catherine Rohn along with him against the orders of the party. 

I reviewed the first book in the book in Chief Inspector series, Death of a Red Heroine, in 2009.  It was a book I had struggled through, but since I was travelling to China I decided to give the second book, A Loyal Character Dancer, a go.  The story was an improvement on the first, presenting an interesting view of China at the start of the period where it opens up to the West, using the arrival of a US Marshall to explore cultural differences.  Chief Inspector Chen is relatively engaging as a lead character, prepared to take risks and challenge the party line and is reflective, quoting poetry as a way of making sense of the world.  However, whilst he’s meant to be a talented and skilled cop, he makes a series of poor and amateur judgements throughout the story, culminating in setting off into the lion’s den with the main source of prey, telegraphing his arrival and bringing no back-up.  Indeed, the procedural elements of the plot are a little weak throughout.  Moreover, the dialogue is somewhat stilted.  The result is a story that is interesting culturally, but falters with respect to the mystery, and whose resolution is far from convincing.

Review of Death of a Red Heroine by Qui Xiaolong (Sceptre, 2000)

1990 and Shanghai is in a process of rapid change as China starts to embrace a new economic future whilst trying to maintain its Communist political system. A young woman’s body is found by two fishermen in a remote canal and Chief Inspector Chen of the special cases unit is assigned to investigate the murder. A successful poet and translator, with influential supporters, Chen’s career is on an upward curve. It soon becomes though apparent that the victim was no ordinary system and the case soon takes on a political dimension and when the evidence starts to point to towards the involvement of high ranking political figures Chen finds himself under threat, relying on his contacts to maintain his position. For an official on the rise the sensible route is to protect the party and pass the case over to internal security, but Chen and his assistant Detective Yu wish to see justice done even if it means endangering themselves and their families.

I finished Death of a Red Heroine a couple of days ago and its being playing on my mind a bit. It was a book I nearly stopped reading twice (once about a fifth of the way in, the other about halfway), but in the end I decided to soldier on to its conclusion. In many ways the book was interesting, detailing the political and societal changes taking place in China in the early 1990s and the nature of Chinese social and familial relations, and some of the poetry was appealing. The story itself though was fairly long winded and could have done with a bit of an edit. My real difficulties though were two-fold. First, was Chief Inspector Chen. Most of his colleagues wonder how he’d been promoted to chief inspector so quickly, especially given his relative lack of experience, and I have to say I did as well. As a detective he was fairly hopeless, missing clues that stuck out a mile and not following up on the most obvious of leads. This wouldn’t have been too bad if he’d been written as a bumbling cop in the Clouseau mode, but he’s meant to be a bit of an intellectual. Second, Chen is meant to be a busy cop investigating several cases and overseeing a specialist unit, yet he hardly seems to break sweat and has time to take things at a very leisurely pace. Overall, I just wasn’t convinced as to the main character or the investigation, which was a shame as there were many aspects of the book to like, especially the description of the history and politics of the new China.