Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781569471937
ISBN: 1569471932
Label: Soho Press
Manufacturer: Soho Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 463
Publication Date: 2000-06
Publisher: Soho Press
Studio: Soho Press

Murder in Shanghai in the '90s presents Inspector Chen with a difficult choice.

The victim, Guan Hongying, was a National Model Worker, a celebrity of utmost probity. But perhaps her personal life was not so pristine. Inspector Chen Cao, a published poet and translator of T. S. Eliot, who has been assigned to head the Shanghai Police Bureau's Special Case Squad, is urged by his superiors to consider the political implications of his investigation. Commissar Zhang, an old bureaucrat, doesn't want Chen to peer under any stones. Does Chen dare to persevere?

Contemporary China is a society in turmoil. Faithful old party members, forced to retire, have lost prestige and perquisites; the new capitalists are on the rise. Still ensconced on top of the ladder are the High Cadres and, even above them, the HCC-High Cadre Children-their privileged status analogous to that of medieval princes. Chen is romantically interested in a newspaperwoman whose background would damage his prospects. He relinquished his former Beijing girlfriend as soon as he learned that she was the daughter of a Politburo member, thus far above his reach. Now, if Guan's murderer is to be punished, Chen must invoke her influence by rekindling the old flame. Or else a murderer may go unpunished.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A REMARKABLE BOOK
Comment: Not a regular mystery reader, I have long been enthralled by the Martin Beck stories written by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo which are set in Sweden and give the foreign reader a fascinating insight into Stockholm life and the politics and bureaucracy of the system. With "Death of a Red Heroine" by Qiu Xiaolong I have encountered a mystery story that I think surpasses those of Martin Beck. Part of its superiority arises from the utter strangeness to a Westerner of life in modern China, part from the personal and occupational problems of the thoroughly believable Inspector Chen, himself a sensitive poet, and (for me a major part) from the poetic invocation of the extraordinary history of that ancient nation. This book is amazingly gripping although I am usually not interested in fictional murder investigations. Its complexity cannot be approximated by a brief review. However, I feel confident that almost every reader will be completely absorbed by this story, and most will learn a great deal.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Contemporary
Comment: It is not often that you get to read a crime novel where the criminal and his accomplice are executed. But this is China. The book is heavy in its flavour but the insight into the Chinese way of life in the early 1990s, after Tiananmen was excellent - the disparate living conditions between the classes and a society in flux. Unfortunately, the book (at least the version that I had), had some inconsistencies like sometimes the place is a college, somtimes institute; sometimes Riverside Cafe, sometimes River Cafe. Otherwise, the pace is slow perhaps reflective of how bureaucracy is in play and swift when things do happen.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mystery? No. Enjoyable? Yes.
Comment: I'm sure it's been covered in other reviews but "Death of a Red Heroine"is no great mystery novel or police procedural, but, the investigation (in my opinion)is merely a pretext to explore the zeitgeist of post-Tiananmen Shanghai. Overall I found the novel enjoyable enough to pick up "A Loyal Character Dancer" (the next novel in the Chen series).

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding at Atmosphere, Poor at Plot
Comment: As a police procedural this novel fails. It is way too long. Half of it should have been cut. There is no real mystery, the clues are obvious, the murderer revealed half-way through the novel. The motive behind the killing is totally predictable. However, what saves this novel is it's fascinating depiction of the incongruities of modern Chinese life. The main character, Detective Inspector Chen is a poet forced by the circumstances of Communist Chinese life into being a police officer. The novel is sprinkled with quotes from Classical Chinese poetry. Chen is an honorable and decent man trying to do good in the society in which he finds himself. The most intriguing elements of the novel are the depictions of male/female relationships both marital and non-marital. Chen's assistant Yu's marriage is movingly described. Chen himself struggles with his attraction for a Beijing librarian whose family is high up in the Party, and his relationship with a Shanghai journalist. Always delightful are the descriptions of the many meals that Chen shares with other as the novel unfolds. Secondary characters are colorfully described. At it's center it is a meditation on how politics drives justice. This is the first in the series that I have read. It shows potential. I hope the others are better plotted.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: dajingxiaoguai
Comment: I cannot fathom the general positive response to this novel. True enough, here and there crop up like mushrooms after the rain a few cavils about some features; but, on the whole, reader reaction has been overwhelming enthusiastic--enough, clearly, to produce a minor constellation of gold stars (gongxi, gongxi to the writer!) and encourage the publication of further ventures in what has become a Bund-and-beyond series.
Perhaps the mystery within the mystery might be revealed, as in a sudden enlightenment of the Kill Bill variety, if someone with the inclination to detail the particulars of both reviews and reviewers makes a complete diaocha of the Sinologic knowledge of all parties concerned.
Still, while the social coordinates and the basic interactions of the characters are plausible on an East or West grid, the plot is still plodding; the personalities predictable; and the poetry, as translated, irritatingly insipid.

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