I did really enjoy this book. It seemed to begin with as if it was going to go really slow and they were going to dither on smoking and thinking about poetry and just saying to themselves, there's nothing we can do - but then they got cracking and did manage to solve the case. Which seems amazing in itself considering the frustratingly restrictive way politics affects every part of their life and dictates how they should talk, what action they can and can't do - and how party politics seemed to override catching a killer and bringing him/her (not giving the solution away!) to justice.

One factor that was incredibly absorbing was the depiction of life in Shanghai in the 1990s. There is a lot of detail in this book, following the lives of the main characters, seeing them going for walks, thinking over their past, their living conditions, what they eat, their financial situation etc etc... which maybe sounds like overkill, but it is so different to anything here, and I don't think we really appreciate just how many liberties and freedoms we have.

Inspector Chen is not the usual standard detective you get in these series - for starters he's not that old, only in his 30s, and he's not world-weary, cynical and bitter; in fact he loves writing poetry and translating western literature. He's not got a lot of experience being a detective, and the role has come to via party politics again. So although he comes in straight away as head of the department, he's not immediately that popular.