A Loyal Character Dancer

This is the first book by Qiu Xiaolong I have read. I was interested in him because I had heard that he was a Chinese who had emigrated to the US, and had written his Inspector Chen detective novels in English. That, in itself, sounded like quite an accomplishment and impressed me. The first thing about Qiu is that his stories ring true. Shanghai in 2008 is vastly different from Shanghai in 1993, but the characters, places and customs are still recognizable. This is not someone with a passing interest in China writing a detective story in China; this is the real thing. The story is about a young woman, whose idealistic youth was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, where she was raped by a man who later married her when she became pregnant. Eventually, she rebuilt her life slowly after leaving her husband, but now had become caught up in a criminal case. Because she was pregnant with a son, her husband, who had made her life a misery during the Cultural Revolution, had asked the US Federal authorities bring to her to the US, where he was now living under the Witness Protection Program. Inspector Chen, the Chinese poet detective and US Federal Marshal Catherine Rohm, were forced by circumstance to deliver her to the man who tormented her so that they could capture members of a Chinese gang. The theme is that justice is not always good, and people are often victims of circumstances beyond their control, and are forced to do things they would rather not do, if only to survive. This is a common Chinese theme. For Americans, this is a theme which frequently makes no sense since being American is all about realizing one's own individual dreams through a combination of hard work, luck and perseverance. For students of modern Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution is often presented as an aberration. But after reading this book, one realizes that the modern prosperous China of today is a product of that period in Chinese history, and that the scar runs very deep among the people even though the people in the cities live very comfortably by modern standards. I look forward to reading Qiu's other detective novels.

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.

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.