15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Private eye novel set in China, with a female protagonist, February 2, 2008
This is an interesting novel. The premise: a young Chinese woman decides to be a private detective in modern Beijing, is strange to say the least. Author Liang, however, is skilled at making modern China come to life, and with it she's created an interesting milieu for her protagonist to work and live in. The result is a fascinating book.
Mei Wang was a police officer for several years. After getting crosswise of the wrong people, she quit, and instead became an "information consultant" in Beijing. This is because private detectives are illegal in modern China (of course) and so she must act under subterfuge. In this, the first entry in the series, she is approached by an older relative who wants her to find out where a priceless relic has gone, now that it's entered the black market somewhere in the city. If she does find it, she'll have to be careful, because if the police discover her with it, they'll arrest her pretty much out of hand.
I enjoyed the atmosphere and setting of this book a great deal, and some of the characters were memorable too. The plot wasn't as good as I'd hoped, though. Presumably Ms. Liang can keep up the atmosphere, and devise a second book with a slightly better plot...
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual and fascinating, April 3, 2008
First Sentence: In the corner of an office in an old-fashioned building in Beijing's Chongyang District, the fan was humming loudly, like an elderly man angry at his own impotence.
Mei Wang had been dismissed from the Ministry for Public Security and has opened an office as a private investigator. "Uncle" Chen, a family friend, hires her to find an ancient, and extremely valuable, piece of jade looted from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution. The case takes her into the back streets of Beijing, and into secrets of her family's past.
This was an unusual mystery and a fascinating book. It is a PI story, but very different from the typical American PI. The story focuses on people, interactions and relationships, yet still has some suspense.
I realized how little I know about China, past or present. There are vast differences between our cultures but enough similarities that the story really worked.
The sense of place is wonderful and the dialogue has just the right voice to it. I am interested to see where Mei Wang's story goes. You might want to give this a try.
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20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Cornerstone" of a mystery, February 22, 2008
1.
Diane Wei Liang's female detective protagonist, Mei Wang, is a character built up of conflicts between her mindset and reality. She is aloof, "an outsider who never wanted to be in" while in college, but her college friends turn out to be the only ones who truly care about her. Her longing for her mother's love manifests as resentment, and her mother suddenly has a stroke before there is a chance to reconcile. She desperately wants to cure her mother, but she has no money or connections, and those things can only come from the sister she looks down on. She detests "guanxi" (connecting with purpose) and people who are good at it, yet whatever clues she obtains for her investigation are through "guanxi." Wherever she exhausts her network of relations, her means of investigation also dry up. For the most part the novel leaves the reader wondering if the only way for Mei Wang to make progress in Chinese society is to embrace the opposite of what she values.
Yet this is a quite realistic depiction of the late 1990s' Chinese society, post Cultural Revolution, in the midst of the Reform-and-Open era. And Diane Wei Liang is at her best depicting it using multi-voice dialogue. A conversation at Mei's class reunion is so real, I can almost see those people's lips moving and hear their voices, as if they spoke in Chinese, as if I were among them.
The intimate reflection on everyday life of contemporary China is a great quality of this novel. For a reader who knows about China, this quality is engaging. Too often I can't finish a novel set in China written by non-Chinese, because it turns me off when the author gets obvious things wrong.
For readers who are less familiar with China, The Eye of Jade provides a real lens into Chinese society. The author picked a good starting time for the story. Between 1980 and 1997 there were amazing changes that took place, almost as amazing as the changes between 1997 and now. The central case that Mei is investigating takes us back in time: to the origin of the relics she is trying to locate, nearly 2,000 years ago; to the circumstances of its disappearance 30 years ago; and to Mei's youth 10 years ago. Thus, without a complete recount of history we are given insights into it. One can reasonably predict that, as future cases come for Mei Wang, we will get a chance to see China develops more, and hopefully also to explore more of its past.
That said, there are some holes in the work. For one thing, the Ministry of State Security (analog of the FBI) did not exist until 1983, so some of the retrospective actions during the Cultural Revolution in late 1960s are not completely plausible. Still, compared with some other English fiction on China, the lapses are small.
2.
Ultimately, Mei Wang does not give in to the Chinese societal trap. Toward the end of the novel, Mei's true self, aloof and courageous as she is, does triumph. When her "guanxi" ends, she singular-handedly confronts each hypothesized suspect one by one, alone and determined. And sure enough, each confrontation takes her closer to the entire truth, until the case is solved.
At this point, however, this triumph should be read as the author's fictionalized ideal ending, rather than a depiction of the reality. After all, it is unlikely in reality that any private detective, not to mention a young woman apparently with no training in self-defense and no backup - would go to each (dangerous) suspect and point a finger at him, "You are the murderer, aren't you?" simply to see if he'll admit to it. A detective who relies on this approach wouldn't be the smartest one anyway.
So why does Diane Wei Liang make Mei Wang do this? One can find a partial answer from the author interview by her publisher, in which she views "guanxi" as "a cornerstone of Chinese culture, as the society is operated according to it".
Except guanxi is more like extra oil for an age-old societal machine than a cornerstone of Chinese culture. In any case "guanxi" is an external factor; the concept might assist a novelist to move forward a plot, but it can't enhance characterization, nor excite the reader. If Mei's entire investigation "operates according to it," the intricate behavior and actions would be absent. The final confrontations carried out by Mei Wang, therefore, are a last-ditch resolution for both the author and the central character.
3.
This raises a key question: is this novel really a detective story? The answer is both yes and no. It is what the author sets out to make; it is not quite accepted as such by readers.
For detective genre readers, the fun of reading is solving a puzzle with the author. It is the chase of logical inference that is thrilling. In The Eye of Jade, however, this element is largely missing. Sure, Mei Wang confronts the suspects with her hypotheses, but when we see this, the hypotheses are already made. We read the conclusions without being letting in the process of reasoning, and we don't know how she gets there. This thrill is not quite there.
Apparently, the author has a different idea about what this book should be. The Eye of Jade is the first in a series of "Mei Wang Mystery" novels, for which the author has a very interesting and intriguing concept. In the interview mentioned above, she says she found crime fiction "an ideal format to examine the social and economical changes that are at the center of modern life in China. I also wanted to paint an honest and authentic picture of life in Beijing."
That is exactly what she does in The Eye of Jade, and quite successfully. The social and economic aspects of life in Beijing are given equal, if not greater, emphasis than Mei Wang's case investigation. A reader who is not looking for a particular genre story could enjoy both threads. To a mystery/crime genre reader, however, the author's stated goals, however admirable and ambitious, do not provide the same thrill as logical inference.
On the other hand, would a romance novel bother its readers for its lack of logic? No. One would have to be bothered by something else. This is to say, the genre label pre-sets reader expectations. It is a double-edged sword. It helps us find the right category for reading pleasure; it can also stop us from being entertained.
Therefore, the author has options. The smart idea of conveying modern China's societal change to English readers through genre fiction (which has a much greater readership than literary fiction) might actually work, if she finds the right genre and executes in it well. If she (or her publisher) chooses to stick with the current label, then she will need to enhance the genre's "cornerstone": logical inference.
(Note: a more complete version of the review can be found on my blog.)
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