Along with watching the Olympic games I too have been enjoying reading some Chinese literature, albeit less weighty than others: Qiu Xiaolong’s latest Inspector Chen novel Red Mandarin Dress. Chen Cao belongs two well-known detective traditions – the (for Westerners) exotic location detective, think H F Keating, Colin Cotterill, Alexander McCall Smith and many others, and the author-detective, e.g. P. D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh.
Chen combines his work as an inspector with the Shangahai police with his literary career as a leading young poet and the worlds often collide. But Chen is a survivor, both as poet and cop, helped of course by a loyal side-kick Detective Yu and Yu’s enterprising wife Peng. One of the pleasures of these books is the quotations and poems from classical Chinese literature, which often provide Chen with the insight to solve the case.
There are several other detective writers who set their works in China, Robert van Gulik (does anyone read him any more?), Christopher West, Eliot Pattison, but unlike them the author is himself Chinese although he has lived in the USA since 1988.
Qiu Xiaolong doesn’t hesitate to describe the less savoury aspects of Chinese crime and politics (not to mention food preparation) and it is difficult for an outsider to judge how true his portrait of modern Chinese society is. There is an interview with him at http://www.mysteryreaders.org/athomeqiu.html.
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