Love and Murder in the Time of Covid

October 15, 2021
In the twelfth Inspector Chen mystery, the former Chief Inspector of the Shanghai Police Bureau, currently sidelined by disapproving Communist Party officials, manages to investigate a murder that took place in the kitchen of a highly influential courtesan/chef. The courtesan's assistant was found in the kitchen with a fractured skull after an invitation-only dinner. With no guests left and no sign of forced entry, the courtesan/chef is the prime suspect. Former Inspector Chen accepts a special-consultant role in the agency of a former Police Bureau buddy, enabling him to question the diners on the fateful night. Readers may question Xiaolong's decision to demote Chen, only to give him investigative powers as a special consultant; it doesn't quite ring true to Xiaolong's theme of watchful Party oppression. The digressive plot is relieved by vivid descriptions of Chinese gastronomy, including street-stall offerings. This is a lesser entry in what is overall a very strong series, but Xiaolong's look at modern China remains of interest.

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May 1, 2023
The turmoil surrounding the pandemic provides cover for a brutal serial killer. Veteran bureaucrat Chen Cao, once the chief inspector of the Shanghai Police Bureau, currently languishes as the director of the Shanghai Judicial Reform Office. In the middle of the Lunar New Year celebration, he finds himself stranded on a dark subway car, the first of the day's indignities. Then he gets a telephone call from government authorities telling him to get a Covid test because he was seen on the street near a hospital. Chen is chilled at the realization that he was caught by a surveillance camera. The pandemic has pushed China toward even stricter regulations, echoing Nineteen Eighty-Four's Big Brother in a motif threaded through the novel. As his title's nod to Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez already hints, Qiu's 13th Inspector Chen mystery is both more literary and more political than earlier books in the series. Relevant literary references, quotations, and poems are peppered generously throughout, from Dante to Doctor Zhivago to Yeats to Animal Farm to several Chinese poets. A collection of recent deaths near the hospital leads Chen to believe there's a serial killer on the loose. His straightforward murder investigation, which allows him to reunite with his friendly ex-colleague Jin, often feels like a MacGuffin for the novel's larger plan to view the Covid pandemic through a haunting literary lens. A provocative and timely take on Covid in China, with a whodunit kicker.

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