Death of a Blue Lantern

The secret of writing a detective novel set in a totally unfamiliar place to most readers must lie in the strength of the central character and the feeling of sympathy and familiarity he can arouse in us. Christopher West's Inspector Wang wins hands down on both counts. How hard must it be to live within a harsh political system, where life is cheap and where your daily task is to look for justice, knowing that even your private thoughts are suspect? It's Wang's personal integrity that is striking, in a land where high-minded propaganda slogans follow you everywhere, and yet there is corruption at every turn. We're used to maverick detectives - is there any other kind? But here you feel that Wang does have something to rebel against, coupled with his touching pride in his country and his calling. This, together with the light authorial touch and a great line in ironic observations, makes Death of a Blue Lantern tremendously readable. England, for example is 'impossibly exotic' - well, it would be, wouldn't it, for Wang? It's a layered book, that wears its author's learning lightly. It's more than a detective novel, it's a picture of a world and a way of living totally alien to our own, yet it reminds us that we're all the same under the skin. I'm delighted it's been reissued - more Wang please!

Christopher West has written a gem of a series with Inspector Wang in China! Death of a Blue Lantern is a wonderful read and a review of recent history to boot. The characters are all well drawn...Wang is always in turmoil but a fellow you'd like to meet...not since VanDerWettering have I liked a policeman more! And you will want to see more of his colleagues in the police and his relatives too. Do yourself a real favor and read the whole series first to last...but good luck finding these books. Can we convince the publishers to reissue the full series so we don't have to hunt them down? As best I can determine that is: Death of a Blue Lantern, Death on Black Dragon River, Death of a red mandarin, and The Third Messiah.

I am always interested in reading novels set in a place I want to visit. That is what I got in Death of a Blue Lantern plus a lot more. In addition to the plot being set in Beijing, some action occurs in Canton, Shanghai and in the mountains in northern China.The hero of this novel is Inspector Wang Anzhuang of the Beijing Central Investigations Division. While spending an evening at the opera, Wang finds a dead body in the theater and launches into a complex investigation of the murder, Chinese Triad mob and thefts of precious artifacts. As the investigation unfolds, we see the influence of the communist party on the police department including a mandatory "self-criticism" of each individual's thoughts and actions during the 1989 Tiananmen Square revolution/massacre. Wang is very conflicted about his government's decisions to fire weapons and its impact on the student protestors. His own actions are called into question, making him, in turn, question his commitment to the beliefs of his party versus the more open Western culture.The ideology does not get in the way of a good police story and in fact some of the party leaders are suspects in certain crimes.This is an easy read and was a nice follow-up to the Chinese story line in Jeffrey Deaver's Stone Monkey that I recently finished.

this book is so good I did not want to put it down. It was a chinese version of gorky park.