Enigma of China (Inspector Chen Series #8)

by Qiu Xiaolong

Overview

The latest in Qiu Xiaolong's critically-acclaimed series about crime in modern China, featuring Shanghai Police Chief Inspector Cao

Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is in an unusual situation—a poet by training and inclination, he was assigned by the party to the Police Department after he graduated college, where he has continued to shine. Now he's a rising cadre in the party, in line to take over the top politic position in the police department, while being one of most respected policeman in the department. Which is why he's brought in by the Party to sign off on the investigation into the death of Zhou Keng.

Zhou Keng—a trusted princeling, son of a major party member—was head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee when a number of his corrupt practices were exposed on the internet. Removed from his position and placed into extra-legal detention, Zhou apparently hanged himself while under guard. While the Party is anxious to have Zhou's death declared a suicide, and for the renowned Chief Inspector Chen to sign off on that conclusion, the sequence of events don't quite add up. Now Chen will have to decide what to do – investigate the death as a possible homicide and risk angering unseen powerful people, or seek the justice that his position requires him to strive for.

Qiu Xiaolong's Enigma of China is one of Publishers Weekly's Best Mystery/Thriller Books of 2013

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250048578
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/17/2014
Series:	Inspector Chen Cao Series , #8
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	775,937
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

QIU XIAOLONG is a poet and author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen as well as Years of Red Dust, a Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2010. Born and raised in Shanghai, Qiu lives with his family in St. Louis, Missouri.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Enigma of China:

"Superb...This installment approaches the levels of Eliot Pattison and James Church's similarly themed novels, and the series has gotten stronger with age." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"In addition to being a wonderful character study and surprise-packed mystery, Qiu's latest is a many-faceted study of contemporary China.." —Booklist


Praise for Don't Cry, Tai Lake:

“When Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department lucks into an all-expenses-paid getaway package, we veteran mystery readers anticipate that more snooping than snoozing will soon be on Chen's vacation itinerary. We are not disappointed.” —NPR on Don't Cry, Tai Lake

“Chen's seventh (The Mao Case, 2009, etc.) is again peppered with poetry and told with clarity and elegance. Its portrait of modern China is as intriguing as its slow-rolling whodunit.” —Kirkus Reviews on Don't Cry, Tai Lake

“Thought-provoking, poetic and suspenseful.” —The Wall Street Journal on Don't Cry, Tai Lake

From the Publisher

The dilemmas of being an ethical cop in a police state have rarely been as neatly delineated as in Qiu’s superb eighth novel featuring Chief Insp. Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau (after 2012’s Don’t Cry, Tai Lake). Chen—a poetry lover and a member of the Shanghai Communist Party Committee—helps look into the apparent suicide of Zhou Keng, the director of the city’s housing development committee, at the hotel where he was under extralegal detention. Zhou ostensibly hanged himself out of shame after a crowdsourced Internet investigation revealed his corruption, but Chen doubts the official story, especially after another suspicious death. All too aware of his country’s contradictions, Chen nods in agreement with a scholar who, in a “controversial yet permissible lecture,” refers to “things that are called socialist or Communist in our Party’s newspapers but are in practice actually capitalistic, primitive or crony capitalistic, and utterly materialistic.” This installment approaches the levels of Eliot Pattison and James Church’s similarly themed novels, and the series has gotten stronger with age. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Can Inspector Chen toe the Communist Party line and certify a suspicious death as a suicide? As he listens to a lecture at the Shanghai Writers' Association in which scholar Yao Ji deplores the "moral bankruptcy" of modern China, esteemed poet and police detective Chen Cao again notes the incongruity and delicacy of his job. Matters like these are much on his mind when Chen is called to help investigate the death of Zhou Keng, the director of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee, who's recently fallen under an ethical cloud. Zhou has been "under detention" for weeks in the luxe Moller Villa Hotel. His death by hanging has been judged a suicide, and Chen's been called in to confirm this party ruling even though Inspector Liao, the head of the homicide squad, and his assistant, veteran detective Wei, are also working the case. Chen and Wei are greeted at the hotel by a pair of party officials, Jiang and Liu, who barely let them work in peace. Although these bureaucrats are anxious to close the case, Chen and Wei find many troubling inconsistencies, like the fact that Zhou had taken sleeping pills on the night of his death. Chen's Internet search for more about the controversial Zhou reveals mainly that information about him has been blocked. When a colleague is run down in a suspicious incident, Chen knows what he must do. In his ninth Inspector Chen novel (Don't Cry, Tai Lake, 2012, etc.), Xiaolong again uses a mystery to focus a large and nuanced portrait of contemporary China.

Kirkus Reviews