A Loyal Character Dancer -

Qiu Xiaolong

Soho Crime

2003

360 páginas

12h 0m

ISBN-10: 1569473412

Inspector Chen’s mentor in the Shanghai Police Bureau has assigned him to escort U.S. Marshal Catherine Rohn. Her mission is to bring Wen, the wife of a witness in an important criminal trial, to the United States. Inspector Rohn is already en route when Chen learns that Wen has unaccountably vanished from her village in Fujian. Or is this just what he is supposed to believe? Chen resents his role; he would rather investigate the triad killing in Shanghai’s beauteous Bund Park. But his boss insists that saving face with Inspector Rohn has priority. So Chen Cao, the ambitious son of a father who imbued him with Confucian precepts, must tread warily as he tries once again to be a good cop, a good man, and also a loyal Party member.

Resenhas (1)

5 (Perfeito)

Don´t read this book for mystery alone!

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.

[Esta resenha foi postada na Amazon em 2003]