Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
One of my friends recently took a class on ethnography and detective fiction (while I got waitlisted--curses!). Ever since, she's been recommending all kinds of mystery series to me. Fair enough; it's long past time that I start expanding my horizons beyond Agatha Christie...
Clocking in at 464 well-packed pages, Death of a Red Heroine is a fairly massive novel, at least as far as mysteries go. One shouldn't dive into it expecting a tight-knit whodunit-type plot or constant suspense. The pacing is leisurely, but this is one of Red Heroine's biggest strengths, because where it really shines is in its detailed, fascinating depiction of early-1990s Chinese life and political intrigue.
The protagonist is Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai police department. Despite his youth, he's a rising star in the Communist bureaucracy, but he first became a police officer almost by accident and continues to have mixed feelings about his job. He's an academic at heart: he spends his spare time writing modernist poetry and translates Western poems and detective novels for extra cash. Chen's cultural literacy adds an extra dimension to the richness of Red Heroine's narrative--many of the situations he encounters bring him to recall a line or two of classic Chinese verse. (This makes Red Heroine reminiscent of traditional Chinese and Japanese literature like The Tale of Genji, whose characters frequently quote poetry).
However, Red Heroine is totally accessible even if you know very little about China, past or present. The only part of it that tripped me up were some of the government position titles and other vocabulary, but I got used to it pretty quickly. The victim of the murder case Chen is investigating is Guan Hongying, a national role-model worker. Her death has instant political implications, due to her position as a widely known Party symbol. Eventually, Chen finds himself trapped between the pressure to solve this high-profile case and the pressure not to solve it. The truth could cast the Party in an undesirable light at a delicate political time.
I would definitely recommend Death of a Red Heroine to people who enjoy books that immerse them in another place or culture. At times the mystery takes a backseat to the flow of the characters' everyday lives (it's in third person but takes a variety of viewpoints). Food often becomes a point of emphasis, and the descriptions of meals--plain and exotic--are mouthwatering. Qiu Xiaolong's writing style is straightforward and restrained but evocative nonetheless, and from time to time he uses startlingly resonant images.
I typically read books in quick gulps, but I spread Red Heroine out over several weeks, a few chapters at a time. It's one of the few novels I've encountered that invited that kind of unhurried exploration while still being interesting enough to keep me going. Although it's standalone, the author has written other mysteries with the same main character, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of him.
