The Chinese Lake Murders

Readers will find this installment of the Judge Dee series crucial reading for many reasons. It introduces Tao Gan, former confidence man and swindler, to the staff of men helping Judge Dee, ancient China's answer to Sherlock Holmes. The three cases in this delicious book are among the most audacious: - A courtesan entertaining the Judge at a private party attempts to warn Dee about a plot against the state. Moments later, she is brutally murdered. The only clue is a page torn from an old book on Chinese chess. - A distraught father complains that his daughter was foully done to death on her wedding night. Later the corpse of the bride goes missing and in her coffin lies a man hacked down by an ax! - A distinguished retired Councilor, nearly ninety years old, suddenly begins selling land that has been in his family for generations. Where is the money going? His secretary, a poor relation, is worried that he will be blamed so he appeals to Judge Dee for help. These cases are among the most challenging and ingenious that Judge Dee and his men will ever solve. For this great plot, I'd award six stars! I knock off a star for the annoying prologue that the author devises; never has a story before the story been so pointless. I also have to knock off a star because the author, in order to elucidate his complex plot, has to do an info dump at the end. Van Gulik was early in his fiction writing career at this point; he may have been reproducing some features of the Chinese popular literature that was his sources. There's truly great action in the middle, however. The scene on the Chinese junk is priceless and should not be missed--the wench shows some clever thinking as well as a few other attributes!

Rebeccasreads highly recommends THE CHINESE LAKE MURDERS as by far the best among the four Judge Dee Chjines Murder Mysteries. This time Dee brings to book a gang involved in embezzlement of government funds. Side by side he also investigates the murder of a girl who dies on her wedding night. Judge Dee-Jen Dijeh (630-700 A.D.) was a Magistrate known for his wisdom & wit in China, & his stories were a part of the local folklore. Robert Van Gulik, who had a historian's interest in China in the early 1950s, was fascinated by the tales of this judge, & finally collected & fictionalized them into four volumes. The wit, ingenuity, & genius of Judge Dee is well reflected. Remember the old tales of King Solomon the Just -- well, give them an Asian flavor, a touch of Old China -- & you get Judge Dee. All of Judge Dee's books are most pleasurable - - worthy of 10 stars!

The third novel in Robert Van Gulik's historical mystery series about a crime-solving Imperial District Magistrate in seventh-century China, sees Judge Dee transferred to the small town of Han-Yuan, along with his family and assistants - Sergeant Hoong, Ma Joong and Chiao Tai. Han-Yuan is only sixty miles from the imperial capital; however it is a small town cut off from most of the world as it surrounded by mountains. The town lies on the shore of a mountain lake which town locals whisper, holds mysterious, even supernatural forces. The novel opens with Judge Dee attending a banquet in his honor on a flower-boat - a floating house of prostitution. At the end of the evening, the judge discovers a famous local courtesan lying dead in the lake water! The suspects are many, since all of Han-Yuan's prominent citizens were attending the party and most of them had a plausible reason for wishing this courtesan dead. Judge Dee has to sort through confusing clues and his task is made more complicated by the sudden disappearance of a new bride and her husband, the violent death of a local carpenter and the suspicions that Han-Yuan may be a center for political unrest! The judge is able to sort through all the confusion and the realization that these multiple crimes are all inter-connected, with his usual blend of wisdom and sagacity. Judge Dee is a very interesting character and the novel itself paints a wonderfully evocative picture of ancient China with its complicated rituals of love and marriage and precise social order that governed everyone's life. The mystery itself is interesting, though perhaps a little too twisty; however, the ending is genuinely powerful and completely plausible. A must-read for fans of the series!

This is only my second Judge Dee mystery, and although I can't compare it to others by the same author, I am definitely hooked on the series. Robert van Gulik offers a unique avenue into thinking about Tang dynasty China (7th century A.D.) and serves up wonderful escapist fiction at the same time. Judge Dee is a conscientious and clever magistrate faced with the brutal murder of a beautiful courtesan who has complicated political and economic connections. As Judge Dee goes about solving the crime, we learn about pleasure boats, prostitution, what people wore (and didn't wear), insurgencies against the empire, and the necessity of a pot of hot tea whenever the going gets rough. The author was a Dutch diplomat and scholar of Chinese jurisprudence whose mysteries are tailor-made for the historically and culturally curious.

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