The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng, the Evil Genius Behind Mao and His Legacy of Terror in People's China

Whit Stillman, the director of Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco, recommended this book in a 2004 article for Publishers Weekly offering "his favorite books for 'slow reading,' with commentary. I haven't read it yet but am ordering it now based on his recommendation. Here's his blurb on the book" "The Claws of the Dragon by John Byron and Robert Pack (out of print). A gothic biography of the Stalinist-trained chief of Mao's secret police. It lives up to its subtitle--"Kang Sheng: The Evil Genius Behind Mao--And His Legacy of Terror in People's China." Kang was the instigator or inspiration for murderous ideological campaigns, from China's Rectification Movement, in the early 1940s, to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge."