Death of a Red Heroine

There’s a kind of charm and naïveté about the detective in this book, he is a relatively strait-laced character and his shock and moral outrage at the sexual and material excesses of some of the corrupt children of high-ranking CCP officials betokens a wholly different society and upbringing, conditioned by Party propaganda. Inspector Chen revels in poetry and ‘good' food, although descriptions of banquets of turtles and bear’s paws again speak of different cultural tastes. The story is delivered slowly—this is set in a Shanghai before computers and mobile phones and the hero must wend his way around town to… show more.