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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781569472422
ISBN number: 1569472424
Label: Soho Crime
Manufacturer: Soho Crime
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: July 01, 2003
Publishing house: Soho Crime
Sale Popularity Level: 31934
Studio: Soho Crime
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Contemporary Shanghai comes vividly to life in this new mystery series.
Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police must find the murderer of a National Model Worker, and then risk his own life and career to see that justice is done.
Amazon.com Review:
By any standard, Inspector Chen Cao is a novelty in the world of police procedurals. A published poet and translator of American and English mystery novels, he has been assigned by the Chinese government, under Deng Xiaoping's cadre policy, to a 'productive' job with the Special Cases Bureau of the Shanghai Police Department.
Shanghai in the mid-1990s is a city caught between reverence for the past and fascination with a tantalizing, market-driven present. When the body of a young 'national model worker,' revered for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up in a canal, Chen is thrown into the midst of these opposing forces. As he struggles to unravel the hidden threads of this paragon's life, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. With party-line-spouting superiors above him and detectives who resent his quick promotion beneath him, Chen finds himself wondering whether justice is a concept at all meaningful in late-20th-century China.
Death of a Red Heroine is a book hovering uneasily between the spheres of fiction and fact, creativity and didacticism. For much of the novel, author Qiu Xiaolong seems more intent on driving home the actions and consequences of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath than on the slowly unfolding plot. Tedious repetitions of the fates, under Mao, of 'educated youths' joust with both the actions of the detectives and Chen's 'poetic' ruminations, which, unfortunately, are infected by precisely the stiffness and arbitrariness Qiu is at pains to decry in his historical passages. The moving couplets Chen favors are potentially fascinating insights into the interaction between ancient and modern China, but instead of provoking the reader into reflection, Qiu offers reductive explanations of each and every poem.
The moments when Qiu concentrates on invoking atmosphere are both illuminating and rewarding: Detective Yu's wife's pride and pleasure in having brought home a dozen crabs at 'state price' are movingly well crafted, all the more so because Qiu seems almost unaware of what he is doing. Rather than lecturing on the economic dilemmas of the modern worker, he lets Peiqin's simple happiness speak for itself. In the last quarter of the book, Qiu seems to find his stride, though his writing style remains undeniably awkward. Here Chen expands and relaxes, and with him, the novel. Qiu's debut, though anything but polished, holds the promise of better things to come. --Kelly Flynn
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Rated by buyers 
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I'm sure it's been covered in other reviews but "Death of a Red Heroine"is no great mystery novel or police procedural, but, the investigation (in my opinion)is merely a pretext to explore the zeitgeist of post-Tiananmen Shanghai. Overall I found the novel enjoyable enough to pick up "A Loyal Character Dancer" (the subsequent novel in the Chen series).
Rated by buyers 
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As a police procedural this novel fails. It is way too long. Half of it should have been cut. There is no real mystery, the clues are obvious, the murderer revealed half-way through the novel. The motive behind the killing is totally predictable. However, what saves this novel is it's fascinating depiction of the incongruities of modern Chinese life. The main character, Detective Inspector Chen is a poet forced by the circumstances of Communist Chinese life into being a police officer. The novel is sprinkled with quotes from Classical Chinese poetry. Chen is an honorable and decent man trying to do good in the society in which he finds himself. The most intriguing elements of the novel are the depictions of male/female relationships both marital and non-marital. Chen's assistant Yu's marriage is movingly described. Chen himself struggles with his attraction for a Beijing librarian whose family is high up in the Party, and his relationship with a Shanghai journalist. Always delightful are the descriptions of the many meals that Chen shares with other as the novel unfolds. Secondary characters are colorfully described. At it's center it is a meditation on how politics drives justice. This is the very first in the series that I have read. It shows potential. I hope the others are better plotted.
Rated by buyers 
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I cannot fathom the general positive response to this novel. True enough, here and there crop up like mushrooms after the rain a few cavils about some features; but, on the whole, reader reaction has been overwhelming enthusiastic--enough, clearly, to produce a minor constellation of gold stars (gongxi, gongxi to the writer!) and encourage the publication of further ventures in what has become a Bund-and-beyond series.
Perhaps the mystery within the mystery might be revealed, as in a sudden enlightenment of the Kill Bill variety, if someone with the inclination to detail the particulars of both reviews and reviewers makes a complete diaocha of the Sinologic knowledge of all parties concerned.
Still, while the social coordinates and the basic interactions of the characters are plausible on an East or West grid, the plot is still plodding; the personalities predictable; and the poetry, as translated, irritatingly insipid.
Rated by buyers -
This is my very first Xiaolong read and I am familiar enough with some of the story locations to appreciate the detail. The sights, sounds, smells, etc described create a real sense of place.
However, as authentic as his "voice" is, I find his written style stilted and not particularly enjoyable to read.
Not sure I will try another one.
Rated by buyers -
The debut of Chief Inspector Chen is set in 1990 when China was still reeling from the democracy movement that was crushed in Tianneman Square the year before. Chen is an unusual character in that he is also a poet and translator of American mystery novels. Like many Chinese, he was sent into the interior during the 'Cultural Revolution' because of his education and because his father had been a Professor of confusian studies.
He has been promoted to a position in the Shanghai Police that is unusual for some one his age. China is still being run by those who were with Mao on the 'Long March' known as the high cadre. Just like in the Soviet Union , the children of the high cadre (referred to as the HCC) are despised by the masses because they have been pampered and use their connections to get good jobs and housing.
Chief Inspector Chen is investigating the death/murder of a 'National Model Worker' whose body was found in an unused canal. When his investi- gation leads him to suspect one of the HCCs, he finds himself under investigation by Internal Security and the Communist Party. He is caught between his wish to solve a crime and protecting the Party from shame.
The book contains a great amount of inside information as to how China is run and how it's "who you know not what you know" that helps you get ahead.
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