Customer Reviews

The Chinese Lake Murders: A Judge Dee Detective Story

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Rebeccasreads highly recommends THE CHINESE LAKE MURDERS as by far the best among the four Judge Dee Chjines Murder Mysteries. This time Dee brings to book a gang involved in embezzlement of government funds. Side by side he also investigates the murder of a girl who dies on her wedding night.

Judge Dee-Jen Dijeh (630-700 A.D.) was a Magistrate known for his wisdom & wit in China, & his stories were a part of the local folklore. Robert Van Gulik, who had a historian's interest in China in the early 1950s, was fascinated by the tales of this judge, & finally collected & fictionalized them into four volumes.

The wit, ingenuity, & genius of Judge Dee is well reflected. Remember the old tales of King Solomon the Just -- well, give them an Asian flavor, a touch of Old China -- & you get Judge Dee.

All of Judge Dee's books are most pleasurable - - worthy of 10 stars!

Readers will find this installment of the Judge Dee series crucial reading for many reasons. It introduces Tao Gan, former confidence man and swindler, to the staff of men helping Judge Dee, ancient China's answer to Sherlock Holmes.

The three cases in this delicious book are among the most audacious:

- A courtesan entertaining the Judge at a private party attempts to warn Dee about a plot against the state. Moments later, she is brutally murdered. The only clue is a page torn from an old book on Chinese chess.

- A distraught father complains that his daughter was foully done to death on her wedding night. Later the corpse of the bride goes missing and in her coffin lies a man hacked down by an ax!

- A distinguished retired Councilor, nearly ninety years old, suddenly begins selling land that has been in his family for generations. Where is the money going? His secretary, a poor relation, is worried that he will be blamed so he appeals to Judge Dee for help.

These cases are among the most challenging and ingenious that Judge Dee and his men will ever solve. For this great plot, I'd award six stars! I knock off a star for the annoying prologue that the author devises; never has a story before the story been so pointless. I also have to knock off a star because the author, in order to elucidate his complex plot, has to do an info dump at the end. Van Gulik was early in his fiction writing career at this point; he may have been reproducing some features of the Chinese popular literature that was his sources. There's truly great action in the middle, however. The scene on the Chinese junk is priceless and should not be missed--the wench shows some clever thinking as well as a few other attributes!