[.ca] Death of a Red Heroine (ISBN 1597222089)

From Amazon.com:
By any standard, Inspector Chen Cao is a novelty in the world of police procedurals. A published poet and translator of American and English mystery novels, he has been assigned by the Chinese government, under Deng Xiaoping's cadre policy, to a "productive" job with the Special Cases Bureau of the Shanghai Police Department. Shanghai in the mid-1990s is a city caught between reverence for the past and fascination with a tantalizing, market-driven present. When the body of a young "national model worker," revered for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up in a canal, Chen is thrown into the midst of these opposing forces. As he struggles to unravel the hidden threads of this paragon's life, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. With party-line-spouting superiors above him and detectives who resent his quick promotion beneath him, Chen finds himself wondering whether justice is a concept at all meaningful in late-20th-century China. Death of a Red Heroine is a book hovering uneasily between the spheres of fiction and fact, creativity and didacticism. For much of the novel, author Qiu Xiaolong seems more intent on driving home the actions and consequences of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath than on the slowly unfolding plot. Tedious repetitions of the fates, under Mao, of "educated youths" joust with both the actions of the detectives and Chen's "poetic" ruminations, which, unfortunately, are infected by precisely the stiffness and arbitrariness Qiu is at pains to decry in his historical passages. The moving couplets Chen favors are potentially fascinating insights into the interaction between ancient and modern China, but instead of provoking the reader into reflection, Qiu offers reductive explanations of each and every poem. The moments when Qiu concentrates on invoking atmosphere are both illuminating and rewarding: Detective Yu's wife's pride and pleasure in having brought home a dozen crabs at "state price" are movingly well crafted, all the more so because Qiu seems almost unaware of what he is doing. Rather than lecturing on the economic dilemmas of the modern worker, he lets Peiqin's simple happiness speak for itself. In the last quarter of the book, Qiu seems to find his stride, though his writing style remains undeniably awkward. Here Chen expands and relaxes, and with him, the novel. Qiu's debut, though anything but polished, holds the promise of better things to come. --Kelly Flynn

Pleasant but sometimes aimless:
This is a basic mystery, with a plot that's very linear with few surprises; thus it's mainly a story of two men overcoming the system around them, a bureaucracy of Red China with the accompanying human foolishness that goes with impersonal, bureaucratic pretense. The characters are its main strength, with the exception of the female lead, who is introduced too late in the story. Its pacing is exciting in that every event is a deadpan, with the conclusion announced early, and then focus building around how it is overcome. Quotes from mostly Chinese poets throughout build a sense of metaphor and background that is both random and highly focused. While it is verbose and often meanders, this is a pleasant book which focuses more on revealing people than mysteries.

Needed a better editor to stay on track:
A good story, but just way too much descriptive passages about buy crabs at the government rate and so forth. Our protaganist - Inspector Chen, seems to have been created as an amalgam of the many Western detectives he translates as a part time job, which leaves him a largely an unbelievable character. Having been to Shanghai often, Qiu's detective story/travelogue wears thin every few pages - eliciting a kind of let's get on with it please - feeling. That said, there are glimpses of brilliance throughout that keep the reader interested.

If you like bad kung fu movies, this book is for you:
This is easily the worst book I have read this year, and really I have to think way back to remember a book as bad as this one. Let's start with the plot. This is supposed to be a murder mystery. That would normally imply intriguing plot twists, misdirection, exciting discoveries, and a surprise ending. In this book, there is only one murder suspect; he is identified in the middle of the book; and (how's this for a shocker?) he ends up being the killer. How exactly is that a mystery? Now for characters.... There are a bunch of them, and some are mildly entertaining in a mindless, childish sort of way. None is truly memorable, not even Chief Inspector Chen who "solves" the case. They are all, without exception, one-dimensional and stereotypical to the point of insulting the reader. And lastly, prose. This book reads like a bad kung fu movie dubbed into English. During most of the dialogue I couldn't help imagining the characters on the big screen, with their lips moving about two seconds before or after the words are spoken. Please tell me there won't be a sequel.

Hailed as Literature, but a Fine Mystery Nevertheless:
Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department, who is also a published poet and translator of T. S. Eliot, is celebrating his new private apartment. It has no kitchen, just two gas burners and the bathroom is small with only a toilet, a shower head and no hot water, but Chen is feeling pretty good as the occupancy of a private apartment is proof of his privileged status. However his celebration is cut short when a beautiful young woman turns up naked in a garbage bag in a canal. Detective Chen and his assistant Detective Yu soon identify her as Guan Hongying, whose name literally means _Red Heroine._ And indeed the murder victim had lead an exemplary life as a Model Worker of the Communist party. The autopsy reveals she had been sexually active shortly before her death, but as far as anyone knows, she was single and uninvolved when she was murdered. With no evidence of sexual trauma, the murder seems a puzzle. During her life, Guan Hongying often appeared in magazines and newspapers and had her photo taken with party leaders, so as soon as they identified the body it was assumed her murder was politically motivated. Yet as Chen and Yu investigate they discover that the young woman had a secret life. Then, when the investigation points to the most privileged group in the country, the case does indeed become political. This novel was nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe award when it first came out. It has also been hailed as fine literature. I suppose it is, but it_s first and foremost a mystery and a darn good one at that. Like with the novels of Martin Cruz Smith, Mr. Qui Xiaolong has delivered a fine story about a place most Americans will not be familiar with and, like with Mr. Smith_s work, that is part of the beauty of the story.

Great!:
A great book, one of my favorites of the year.