Well a really pleasant surprise. Imagine Adam Dalgleish transported to Shanghai just after Tianamen Square - there's even a sly direct reference to PD James in the story. Add in a messy murder with political connections to both the victim and the prime suspect and the investigator is in deep water...
Recommended.

I consigli, quelli buoni. Svariati anni fa, a un Salone, un amico mi consigliò questa serie.
Con minuscolo ritardo l'ho cominciata, finalmente, e posso dire che il consiglio era totalmente giusto.

Molto interessante l'ambientazione, la Cine degli anni 90 con l'apertura all'occidente, la situazione di Hong Kong, il passato ingombrante e un futuro ancora difficile da prevedere, sotto tutte le spinte differenti cui era sottoposto
Interessante anche il protagonista, il "giovane non più giovane" Chen, ispettore dei casi speciali e con un possibile buon futuro in politica (cosa, lì e allora, non era politica?), studi di letteratura alle spalle, un poliziotto poeta ancora in cerca della sua strada.
Un poliziotto onesto e integerrimo, come Yu e Vecchio Cacciatore, in un ambiente pieno di arrivisti e opportunisti. Come sempre del resto, e come ovunque.

La storia è buona, forse un po' troppo da deus ex machina la risoluzione ma era anche la cosa più probabile e realistica, in quella situazione .
Una serie da continuare.

This one came recommended to me by The Colleague That Can Do No Wrong, at least not when it comes to recommendations. It was excellent, although it's probably not a book for people who want a straightforward mystery novel.

Set in Shanghai in 1990, there is a murder that is to be solved. But the charm of this novel, for me, lies in the way the author captures the atmosphere of the city and how he interweaves history and poetry with the main plot. The crime plot was interesting, but what had me feel anxious to read more every second I could were the characters, whose fate very quickly became very important to me.

Loved it. It is a welcome change from the books I normally read and I loved the chinese imagery throughout the book. While the poems were interesting, they did start to get a little repetitive but fit very well into the style of writing. I also thought the plot of the murder itself was a little simplistic but the politics around the investigation made up for it. I know I'll definitely be reading more in this series.

To my mind, the very best crime fiction in the world provides a window into the world in which it is set. Be that the psyche of the people, the machinations of the society, how a community is structured and operates, the laws and mores, even the way in which authorities deal with the disorder, how they implement authority. DEATH OF A RED HEROINE is set in Shanghai in 1990, a year after Tiananmen Square, an ancient city with a population tightly controlled by the Communist Party. Poet Chen Cao is an unlikely policeman, forced into the job by the party system, he's caught between a love of poetry and his own innate sense of responsibility. A loner, a romantic soul, he heads a special unit which is given the task of investigating the brutal murder of Guam Hongying. A National Model Worker, the death of Hongying is viewed as much a political situation as it is a crime.

DEATH OF A RED HEROINE is a very intricate book, exploring many aspects of the society in which the action takes place. Firstly the character of Inspector Chen Cao, a maverick (as much as you can be under totalitarian control), he's a poet, a loner, a romantic soul forced into the life of a policeman. Enjoying the very small privileges that come with rank, he's also uncomfortable with their existence. He's more fortunate in his friendships - both with long-term friends and with his colleagues.

The second aspect of the book that is carefully explored is the victim herself. Her status as a National Model Worker means that her death hits the desks, and the minds of the upper echelons of the Communist Party. Her treatment, in death, as it was in life, is slightly different. The way that her status, and her life was regarded is a particularly interesting aspect of this book, as it leads to the final component of the book worth mentioning - Chinese Society in its own right. Possibly the strongest aspect of the book, because the culture and political system of the society imposes itself over every aspect of it's people's lives. From the way that the investigation is regarded, to the way that Hongying and Chen Coa lead their lives, every move everybody makes is somehow choreographed by the ever present "Party" and its cadres.

The parts of the book that don't work quite as well are the plot, and some of the messages that the author is attempting to impart. Second part first - there is some rather heavy-handed repetition of the ills of Communist China. Whether or not you agree or disagree with the messages being delivered, constant repetition doesn't help. The first part - the plot - well got more than a bit hazy at times. Sometimes this was because we'd wandered so far from the central point of the book memory faded, at other points it was simply because plot points sort of got "dumped" into the narrative. Either way, it's not the most complex or unexpected resolution to the death of an attractive young woman.

It also isn't on the fast, tense, light read side of the scale. This is a book which will require a bit of concentration, some acceptance that as with many debuts, there's a bit of work going on to establish a character and his place in the world. But as a lead into a new series, this book has ticked yes to a lot of questions. This is undoubtedly a series that I want to catch up with. In a hurry.

I know very little about The Chinese Cultural Revolution. The changing political climate in China of the 90s is essentially a character here. It was fascinating. How does Inspector Chen navigate a murder case that has politics wrapped up in it as tightly as a dog with a bone?

I found "Comrade Chief Inspector Chen" (the way characters address one another is a mouthful!) to be a very sympathetic character. He struggles to maintain his integrity during the case when the government lackeys make that hard to do. The untouchable HCC, or High Cadre Children, bear a striking resemblance to the children of rich Americans. It's a fascinating dynamic. As China struggles to grow economically, the people who held power during the first years of Mao's reign, are treated with more respect than is there do. Again, like people with money in this country. I don't know how true to life this balance between Capitalism and Communism is in China but it made for a heck of a read.

It was not people that make interpretations, but interpretations that make people.

While I'm doing my best to expand my reading on a demographical level, I'm fairly predictable when it comes to my enjoyment of various genres. I'll pick up a mystery novel every so often under special circumstances ([b:Murder on the Orient Express|853510|Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)|Agatha Christie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1486131451s/853510.jpg|2285570] for the sake of a movie and a famous woman writer, for example), but I can't recall ever enjoying them for the sake of the mystery. I liked both of the Natsuo Kirino crime novels that I've read, but that was because of her brutally incisive take on gender politics, not because I cared very much about solutions or the chase. I was drawn to DoaRH by promises of a tale other than the same old Euro, written by someone who was a participant in, not a fetishizer of, the culture, but there's more than one way to skin a cat, and I found that the welcome addition of poetry and meditations on Chinese history, both ancient and recent, couldn't totally make up for an overtly voyeuristic style when it came to the women in the novel. The mystery's resolution as admirable in its coldly pragmatic logic, but it doesn't do much good to choose one's material in order to ward off stereotypes, only to land in a fire of others.

This work both is and isn't a quick read. On the one hand, the writing is rather simplistic, the plot is straightforward for all its background machinations, and there is very little innuendo that isn't immediately contextualized. On the other hand, it became rather dreary to follow the narrative's obsessions with sexualizing and/or pigeonholing women, from the beginning eroticizing a dead female body, to the middle lone female POV being little more than a mirror of the surrounding male characters with a touch of whimsy despite the character development of a capable mother and industrious worker, to the end of a long lost love, a perfect mother, and a romantically overthrown political model appearing in rapid succession, a combination of three people that didn't have half of the complexity of the male sidekick. It took the edge off the commentary on the often harrowing history of early 1990s China, and when comparing this work to [b:Beijing Coma|2100810|Beijing Coma|Ma Jian|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440047798s/2100810.jpg|3453425] as I did whenever the narrative brought Tienanmen Square up, I was left with the usual emptiness that comes from witnessing so much being told in conjunction with ignoring or petrifying half the impacted population. The gratuitousness of the last few chapters didn't help either, and I was left with a mystery novel that, despite its largely respectful yet pragmatic treatment of an often Euro-demonized world, often fell prey to the same sensationalizing stereotypes that plagues noir works which deal with whiter countries. Much as I wouldn't mind learning more about the history of China, literary and otherwise, I can do that in a much more effective manner with other works, and can even wholly focus on women to boot: two birds with one stone.

This mystery novel certainly had a lot more original context and a higher standard of quality than the average classic. However, it's hard to meditate in reflective complacency over snapshot views of late 20th century China and its backdrop of history if half the characters are used and abused so cavalierly and then superficially sympathized with at the end, as if all the objectification that happened previously could be blown away with a few short pats on the head. That, and deus ex machina on part of several, again female, characters made the last few sections absurd, seeing as how they somehow telepathically went completely out of their way in order to make the male main character happy. All in all, a decent learning experience, if less than entertaining, but there are disfavorable reasons for why I sped through it as I did.

Justice was like colored balls in a magician's hand, changing color and shape all the time, beneath the light of politics.

I liked this, and it was a bit different for me, as I don't read a whole lot of mysteries. But I felt that it read a bit slow.