Enigma of China: An Inspector Chen Novel
Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police wanted to be a poet in college but was state-assigned upon graduation to the police bureau. He is, by definition, a man at war with himself, a poet caught within the constraints of the party. (Chen will remind fans of the late Stuart Kaminsky’s Inspector Rostnikov of the Moscow Police mysteries.) This series brilliantly portrays Chen’s predicament and his maneuvers to both work within the system and subvert it. The prod to Chen’s conscience this time comes from party orders to sign off on the death of the son of a major party member as a suicide, when Chen’s instinct is that he may have been murdered. The man (head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee) was outed by “netizens” who investigated his corrupt practices through the Internet, starting with a photo of one very expensive pack of cigarettes. In addition to being a wonderful character study and surprise-packed mystery, Qiu’s latest is a many-faceted study of contemporary China. --Connie Fletcher