Customer Reviews

A Loyal Character Dancer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The second book in the Inspector Chen series is equal in many ways to outstanding predecessor, Death of a Red Heroine. Once again, the reader is drawn into an excellent mix of detective procedural and portrait of China in economic and social transition during the early '90s. Shanghai-based Inspector Chen is assigned to baby-sit a U.S. Marshal who has been sent to collect the wife of the key witness in a federal case against the smuggling of illegal immigrants into America. However, when the pregnant woman disappears without a trace, Chen, Detective Yu, and Marshal Catherine Rohn have only a week to track her down before the trial starts-and without his wife, the witness won't cooperate. At the same time, Chen insists on investigating the bloody murder of an unidentified man in Chen's favorite park (echoes of, or homage to, Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park).

Since Chen and Yu's histories were established in the first book, there is much less of their personal lives in this volume, which is a bit of a shame. There is also somewhat less about politics and the Party's influence on private life in this book. Instead the hidden hand of the triad gangs menaces Chen and his investigation, with unclear motives and unclear allegiances. In addition, the history and impact of the Cultural Revolution (a subject at the heart of the recent novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress) becomes more directly relevant to the plot. Another main element is the proliferation of a "gray market" economy, where bribery and corruption are nibbling away at the Communist system. Distasteful as it is, Chen must involve himself with unsavory elements with no solid political backing in order to pursue his investigation, and indeed, possible leaks within his own department.

This sequel is quite good to be sure, however there is a running flaw which undermines it somewhat. The brilliance of the first book was in its complete immersion in time and place, by introducing an American outsider as a main character in this story, the author cheapens the experience somewhat. It instantly moves into the realm of "unlikely partners battling crime", which we have seen time and again in fiction and film. This is exacerbated by the rather stilted romantic tension between Chen and the American woman which always seemed rather forced to me. It's also unfortunate that near the end there is a plot contrivance whereby Chen makes an absolutely incredible blunder-it's such an unlikely mistake I had to stop and reread the passage three times to verify that I had understood it properly. Still, there are running mouthwatering descriptions of food, plenty couplets of classic Chinese poetry, and an exciting climax to finish things off. It's well worth reading, both as a crime novel and as a picture of China a decade ago.

Ambitious Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police is annoyed at being asked to baby-sit a visiting American detective. As much as he wants to help the US stop the smuggling of Chinese illegals into the US, the favors being done for one of the illegals in return for his testimony against a notorious snakehead leave a sour taste in Chen's mouth. It doesn't help that the wife of the illegal, whom the American inspector is supposed to escort back to the US, has inconveniently disappeared.

All this sets the stage for why a Shanghai chief inspector (even one with a degree in English and American literature) is investigating the probably gang-related disappearance of a Chinese lower-middle class woman with a blonde American tagging along (even a member of the US Marshals Service with a degree in sinology.) The situation gives Chen the opportunity to show the American (and us) the best of Chinese cuisine, music, literature and traditions, while exposing her to the everyday lives of the kind of people who populate a criminal investigator's world. Chinese cities are crowded and life in rural China is still harsh for most people. Qiu doesn't evade that reality, while he acknowledges the growing existence of an affluent, sophisticated middle class in cosmopolitan areas like Shanghai.

Be warned that the author uses his characters to discuss some hot political issues, such as the Chinese one-child per family policy and US immigration law. He takes care to allow both sides of every issue to be aired, but these are still topics that distress some readers. Qiu is not a `safe' writer. He probes and provokes and touches some tender spots.

The spotlight, however, remains on Chief Inspector Chen Cao, a most extraordinary man. He's intelligent, educated, thoughtful and realistic. Working within a bureaucratic organization, dealing on a daily basis with the criminal, vulnerable and damaged, he uses his love of poetry and respect for Chinese tradition to maintain his bonhomie and integrity in a conflicted society in confusing times. In many ways, he represents the best of modern China.

Book two in the (People's Republic) Inspector Chen saga meets the high expectations aroused by Qui Xiaolong's first, Death of a Red Heroine. A Loyal Character Dancer is just a damn good mystery--a police procedural of the first water, dangling clues like fish-meal dumplings in front of our noses and leading us on a hunt for the wife of a man slated to testify in a crucial people-smuggling case in the U.S.

Reading A Loyal Character Dancer offers the exotic land of China in all its complexity, with neither the Revolution nor the Cultural Revolution ever forgotten. We discover a still-thoroughly traditional China entrenched in. but not extinguished by, the peculiarities wrought by Communism--a China where an herbalist works on a Karioke-bar Mr. Big Bucks and from which the influence of the criminal triads has never disappeared.

SoHo Press has made a big success--at least a literary one--by bucking the mainstream insistence that Americans won't read mysteries set in overseas locales unless the protagonist is thoroughly a U.S. type. That theory is just another irksome example of the dumbing down of literature to appeal to the `masses,' but thank goodness for SoHo and books like Death of a Red Heroine and A Loyal Character Dancer. Any mystery lover will understand what author Qui Xiaolong is striving for and achieves in A Loyal Character Dancer.

As the now St. Louis-based professor did in his Anthony-winning Death of a Red Heroine, Qui Xiaolong has concocted a superb and classic tale of crime investigation, one with memorable secondary characters and fascinating cultural intrigue. We must thank the author for taking us into a very up-to-date Communist China and presenting us with the full scope of so much that goes on there. The book is a stunning success, intricate and entertaining in the extreme. G. Miki Hayden, author of Pacific Empire--"people whose vibrant existence on the page is never in doubt" NYTimes.

The book contains all the ingredients that make a mystery good -- a puzzling crime, dialogs between characters whose implications are left for the reader to extract, and a plausible conclusion. However it was not for these elements alone that I enjoyed the book. In fact I had picked up the volume after hearing a review for it on NPR (National Public Radio). It was reported in that review that the book depicted the going-on in current China, in particular Shanghai very well. I found the statement to be well grounded.

The fabrics of the city are of course delivered through the book's protagonist, chief inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai police bureau. He is an intelligent 30-ish man of integrity who enjoys poetry and food. Because of his interest in poetry, readers are exposed to fragments of Chinese poetry throughout (for every 5 pages or so appears a fragment). His predilection towards food brings readers to the nooks and corners of Shanghai for gourmet Chinese food and specialties. The process of solving the case reveals snapshots of the society -- how guanxi (loosely translated as relationships or connections) dominates every aspect in life, how no one is ever free from politics (Chen Cao often times withholds information even from his own boss for political considerations), how rapid economic growth is accompanied by the growth of the triads, how Mao's cultural revolution is still affecting peoples' lives, etc. Cultural differences between US and China is also highlighted through the character US Marshal Catherine Rohn, who is Chen's US counterpart in solving the illegal immigration case and serves as his love interest in this episode (another cultural aspect -- Chen gets monitored by Internal Security for his interest in Catherine).

Except for the slight slackening of pace towards the end I enjoyed the novel very much. This was my first episode in Inspector Chen series. Immediately after finishing this book I placed an order for an older episode featuring Chen.

I loved Qui Xiaolong's first mystery, Death of a Red Heroine, so much that I picked up A Loyal Character Dancer as soon as I could. Death of a Red Heroine really excited me and I couldn't put it down: I love Inspector Chen and his struggles with being a policeman when his true love is literature and especially poetry; I love the quotations from the Chinese poets and from T. S. Eliot and others; I love the descriptions of Shanghai and life in China; I love the parallels between the dead Model Worker and Chen's own life; and I love the twist at the end that makes Chen wonder again about his life as a policeman.

Chen is back in A Loyal Character Dancer, but this time the meanderings are fewer (and it's the meanderings rather than the mystery itself that make Qui a good writer). Chen's romance with the American policewoman never quite comes alive for me the way his two romances in the first book did. The new focus of the mystery, Wen, also never captures my attention the way the dead Model Worker does. Qui's writing even seems less rich.

I get the impression that some editor or another warned Qui off a lengthy book that strays far from the main story line, but I fear A Loyal Character Dancer is therefore a weaker book. I still enjoyed it, but this time I could put it down.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series, Death of a Red Heroine, I jumped right into reading the sequel. This second visit with Chief Inspector Chen and his loyal deputy Yu is fun and the case even more interesting than that in the Red Heroine as it involves gangs and illegal immigration from China to the United States. But what I really liked in Red Heroine was the interesting group of characters, the descriptions of life and political atmosphere of 1990 Shanghai. Nothing in Character Dancer add to the first book in this area as it is not fresh and the group of characters are given minor rolls. New twist is that Inspector Chen must work with a United States Marshal, a woman named Catherine Rohn. This I suspect was a plot devise to give some dialog to the management of U.S. / China relations. The problem here is that the Rohn character is so underwritten she becomes more of wooden prop to hold up the narrative. And lastly, I am not a big fan of mysteries that end which several pages of the brilliant inspector explaining all that happened and perhaps why. All that said if you liked the character of Inspector Chen and a book more aimed at the case than the character I think you will get some entertainment value. I do plan to read the next book in the series and hope it returns to the roots of Red Heroine.

Once again Qiu Xiaolong offers a fantastic mystery. What amazed me in his first novel was the cultural depth, so to speak, the feeling I had at the end of the novel that I had learned more about modern China than I would have, had I watched a documentary or assisted a one-semester course at the local university. I had the same sensation this time, even though some of the minor details were already known. Inspector Chen is a very believable character caught like so many of us between a profession [police officer] and an avocation [poet] which at first appear mutually exclusive. The true revelation comes when we discover how his knowledge of poetry helps him in his investigations. This characteristic of his, the love of poetry, also makes Chen - at least to my eyes -- more Chinese, for crafty, more sensitive than many men and certainly than most detectives, reminescent only of Inspector Morse, in his beloved Cambridge.

I agree with the previous reviewer than some of the more literary passages, tangential subjects, and cultural observations appear to have been shaved off in this second book, probably through the hands of some know-it-all editor who believes that a thick book with plenty of literary allusions might bore or be too much of a challenge to the ninth-grade level reading he imagines his readers to possess.

But in the end, the cuts, if there were some, did not take away from the overall charm of the book, of Inspector Chen and of China.

I intend to read his next book and I strongly recommend the reading of this one; both for the mystery as well as for the information on a changing China.

I'd heard good things about Qiu's first book, Death of a Red Heroine, but was only able to get my hands on his second book, ALCD. I picked it up eagerly, not because I like mystery fiction generally, but I am interested in the political and cultural environment of China. I was surprised to find the book a bit dull. I liked the detailed descriptions about life in china, but I found the characters not particularly interesting and the story kind of pedestrian. Moreover, I found the attraction between Chen and Rohn very grating, but that's prob because I hate romantic stuff in non-romance books. Seemed very hollywood to me. In fact, wouldn't be at all surprised if the book was made into a movie. Anyway, I would still recommend reading the book because it does paint a very interesting portrait of life in china and it's always a good thing to support authors there. If you are interested in reading more chinese authors, check out Mo Yan. Cheers.

Shanghai Police Inspector Chen Cao is a man on the rise. Which doesn't always mean he gets to work the cases he wants. Intrigued by the possible Triad murder of a silk-pajama-clad man in a popular park, Chen is told to sideline the case in order to shepherd US Marshall Catherine Rohn around Shanghai.

Rohn is there to pick up Wen Liping, wife of a reluctant witness in an important immigrant smuggling case, who is to join her husband in the witness protection program. But Wen has disappeared - kidnapped by the Triad smugglers, or in flight from them.

Wen, a worn-out peasant with an abusive husband, was once a Shanghai native, a promising and beautiful "educated youth" sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Chen's assistant, Yu, (whose life also was altered irreparably by the Cultural Revolution) has gone to her village to investigate, and Chen allows the insistent American marshal to assist on his interviews with Shanghai contacts.

Punctuated with Chen's poetry quotations and Confucian proverbs, and lots of Chinese meals, Qui's (winner of the Anthony Award for his first Chen mystery, "Death of a Red Heroine") writing is evocative, though his dialogue can be clunky and too expository and the pace of the mystery is uneven, its path overlong.

But his picture of China in transition, a generation burdened by the Cultural Revolution (and what a difference in lives a year or two in age has meant), the opportunists homing in on changing economic policies, the power of the Triads, the meaning of communism to the people who live it - all of this is succinctly, adroitly drawn. The title, for instance, refers to Wen and her exuberant performance of the only dance allowed during the Cultural Revolution - a dance holding the Chinese character for Loyalty to Chairman Mao.

In the course of their hunt for Wen, and Chen's continuing interest in the park-murder case, the mismatched pair travels around China, allowing Qiu to showcase the cultural gulf and human commonality between them. An intriguing, absorbing series.

As with Death of a Red Heroine, I enjoyed reading about Chinese culture at the same time that I was reading a good mystery novel. And, even though I'm not a romance fan, I think that Qiu did an excellent job of creating a believable, interesting releationship between the 2 main characters, which added a lot to the story. All of the food/eating references remind me of the exotic sandwiches that Francis X Delaney from The Deadly Sin books by Lawrence Sanders - these little dim sums are wonderful! This is a thoroughly enjoyable read, and I look forward to my 3rd trip to China with Inspector Chen.