Book Review: When Red is Black

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

When Red is Black     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Qui Xiaolong
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: Inspector Chen # 3

Qui continues his award winning series, as Inspector Chen and Detective Yu investigate the death of an author and translator who lived in a small cramped room in an old fashioned Shanghai house.

Yin Lige was one of thousands of young Chinese caught up in the shifting priorities and cruel injustice of the Cultural Revolution. In her assignment to a backwater agricultural area, she met and fell in love with another banished author many years her senior. After her lover's death, she devoted herself to translating his poetry and published an account of his death which became a well known novel. Now she herself is dead, the victim of strangulation.

Inspector Chen has been offered a lucrative contract to translate a plan for real estate development into English, and has taken his earned vacation leave to work on the project. The developers are hoping to attract overseas capital to Shanghai. So Detective Yu is now the lead investigator into the death of Yin.

As in the earlier books, the political and economic changes in China play an important role in the story - yet the investigation itself is a very satisfying presentation of the classic police procedural.

Chen still recalls fragments of classic Chinese poetry at every opportunity. Yu, his wife, and family continue to struggle to maintain a calm way of life in a cramped tiny apartment. And the reader is treated to Qui's many descriptions of classic Chinese cuisine. It's wise to have some snacks nearby as one reads - hunger pangs are a familiar accompaniment to reading about Inspector Chen and Detective Yu!

Woodstock - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Woodstock - RAM