Don't Cry, Tai Lake

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429973544
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
"Dark, gorgeous...feels authentically Chinese and it works like a charm." --Washington Post Book World on A Case of Two Cities Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is offered a bit of luxury by friends and supporters within the Party – a week's vacation at a luxurious resort near Lake Tai, a week where he can relax, and recover, undisturbed by outside demands or disruptions. Unfortunately, the once beautiful Lake Tai, renowned for its clear waters, is now covered by fetid algae, its waters polluted by toxic runoff from local manufacturing plants. Then the director of one of the manufacturing plants responsible for the pollution is murdered and the leader of the local ecological group is the primary suspect of the local police. Now Inspector Chen must tread carefully if he is to uncover the truth behind the brutal murder and find a measure of justice for both the victim and the accused.

Enigma of China

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 125002580X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The eighth novel in Qiu Xiaolong's acclaimed Chinese crime series sees Inspector Chen confronted by a terrible choice between Party politics or his principles - with his career at stake

A Loyal Character Dancer

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1569477949
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
The second book in the Inspector Chen investigations Inspector Chen’s mentor in the Shanghai Police Bureau has assigned him to escort US Marshal Catherine Rohn. Her mission is to bring Wen, the wife of a witness in an important criminal trial, to the United States. Inspector Rohn is already en route when Chen learns that Wen has unaccountably vanished from her village in Fujian. Or is this just what he is supposed to believe? Chen resents his role; he would rather investigate the triad killing in Shanghai’s beautiful Bund Park. Li insists that saving face with Inspector Rohn takes priority. So Chen Cao, the ambitious son of a father who imbued him with Confucian precepts, must tread warily as he tries once again to be a good cop, a good man and also a loyal Party member.

Death of a Red Heroine

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1569476969
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Book Description
A TIME “100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time” Meet Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police in this “refreshingly brave exploration into political China, woven around a tense thriller” (Huffington Post). “A matchless pearl.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air A young “national model worker,” renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—to see justice done.

Hold Your Breath, China

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1448304164
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
"Fascinating... Xiaolong writes with both urgency and grace about modern China is another well-crafted mystery" - Booklist Starred Review Inspector Chen is on the case of a serial murderer when he is called away to report on environmentalists trying to tackle the pollution issues in China. Chief Inspector Chen and Detective Yu Guangming are brought into a serial murder case when the Homicide squad proves incapable of solving it. But before Chen can make a start, he is called away by a high-ranking Party member for a special assignment: to infiltrate a group of environmental activists meeting to discuss the pollution levels in the country and how to prompt the government into action. Chen knows it will be a far from simple task, especially when he discovers the leader of the group is a woman from his past. Meanwhile, Yu is left to investigate a serial murder case on his own. Both Chen and Yu face pressure from those above to resolve the cases in a satisfactory way . . . even if that means innocents face the punishment.

Under Heaven

Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110118700X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Book Description
Award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay evokes the dazzling Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China in an masterful story of honor and power. It begins simply. Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father's last great battles. In recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses. You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise he would probably be dead already...

Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1448305543
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Chen Cao has been removed from his chief inspector role, but that doesn’t stop him investigating a ‘private kitchen’ murder that has similarities to a Judge Dee story. No longer a chief inspector, Chen Cao finds himself as director of the Shanghai Judicial System Reform Office. To outsiders it’s a promotion, but Chen knows he’s being removed from the spotlight as he’s immediately placed on involuntary ‘convalescence leave’ to stop him interfering with any cases. However, with various high-profile crimes making headlines and fears escalating over vigilante reprisals, Chen’s superiors know he must at least appear active. One case revolves around Min Lihau, a mingyuan, who runs a ‘private kitchen’ for powerful figures in Shanghai. Min’s accused of murdering her assistant, yet Chen is struck by its similarities to a historic case involving the famous Judge Dee. When an acquaintance of his is murdered in connection with Min, Chen knows he can’t stand idly by . . . but he must act in secret, under the cover of writing a Judge Dee novel.

Red Mandarin Dress

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312539696
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department finds himself caught up in a dangerous case when the bodies of two young women dressed in identical red mandarin dresses turn up, igniting fears of the city's first sexual serial killer.

Filth

Author: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393350983
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam. There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . . .In Bruce Robertson Welsh has created one of the most compellingly misanthropic characters in contemporary fiction, in a dark and disturbing and often scabrously funny novel about the abuse of everything and everybody. "Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing in decades."—Sunday Times [London] "[O]ne of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit, and force, and in a voice which those alienated by much current fiction clearly want to hear."—Times Literary Supplement "Welsh writes with such vile, relentless intensity that he makes Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the French master of defilement, look like Little Miss Muffet. "—Courtney Weaver, The New York Times Book Review "The corrupt Edinburgh cop-antihero of Irvine Welsh's best novel since Trainspotting is an addictive personality in another sense: so appallingly powerful is his character that it's hard to put the book down....[T]he rapid-fire rhythm and pungent dialect of the dialogue carry the reader relentlessly toward the literally filthy denouement. "—Village Voice Literary Supplement, "Our 25 Favorite Books of 1998" "Welsh excels at making his trash-spewing bluecoat peculiarly funny and vulnerable—and you will never think of the words 'Dame Judi Dench' in the same way ever again. [Grade:] A-. "—Charles Winecoff, Entertainment Weekly

The Mao Case

Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429965754
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is the head of the Special Case group and is often put in charge of those cases that are considered politically "sensitive" since, as a rising party cadre, he's regarded by many as reliable. But Inspector Chen, though a poet by inclination and avocation, takes his job as a policeman very seriously, despite the pressures put upon him from within and without, and is unwilling to compromise his principles as a policeman in favor of political expedience. However, after the new Minister of Public Security insists that Chen personally take on a 'special assignment', an investigation already begun by Internal Security, he may no longer be able to resist those pressures. The party, increasingly leery of international embarrassment, is unhappy about two recent books that place Mao in a bad light. Now, Jiao, the granddaughter of an actress who was likely one of Mao's mistresses - a woman suspected of being Mao's own granddaughter - has recently quit her job, moved into a luxury apartment, and, without any visible means of support, become a part of a new social set centered around the remnants of pre-Communist Shanghai society. What they fear is that, somehow, she has inherited some artifact or material related to Mao that will, when made public, prove embarrassing. Even though there is no evidence that such even exists, Chen has been charged to infiltrate her social circle, determine if the feared material exists and, if it does, retrieve it quietly. And in only a few days - because if he can't resolve this 'Mao case' within the deadline, the party will resort to harsher, more deadly means.