Undisputed Classic 10

Classic Historical Mystery: The author (1910 – 1967) was a Dutch diplomat who grew up in what is now Indonesia. An outstanding student of languages, he liked study and research from early on: at only 18 years of age, he had already had two papers published. He produced many scholarly items in the following years and his Lore of the Chinese Lute is still read by ethnomusicologists. Many years ago, my Chinese history professor recommended van Gulik’s whodunnits starring Judge Dee (630 – 700), a Tang era judge that van Gulik transported to the late Ming era (1368 – 1644). Hey, artists can do what they want as long as minors are not harmed.

Murder in Canton – Robert van Gulik

Judge Dee's adventures began in The Chinese Gold Murders with his first posting as a district magistrate and ended with his appointment as President of the Metropolitan Court in this outing from 1966.

This whodunnit combines elements of the thriller and the spy story. Court intrigues that are par for the course on the eve of dynastic changes complicate Judge Dee’s investigation of the disappearance and subsequent murder of a high court official. As usual the judge is assisted by his trusty aides. One is Chiao Tai, disgraced ex-soldier and the other ex-con artist Tao Gan, brainy and street-wise. A mysterious femme fatale will make Chiao Tai fall in love with her and a talented blind girl who is a dealer in crickets makes Tao Gan re-think his woman-hater stance.

There is no lack of murder victims nor of well-endowed women running about with no clothes on. Van Gulik did his own illustrations and half the drawings feature topless women. As in The Monkey and The Tiger, The Chinese Maze Murders and The Haunted Monastery, the author creates a villain who commits crimes out of pathological shame, frustration, and resentment. The villain is one of those smart guys who goes off the rails, a dangerous combination of intelligence and anger.

Ever on the anachronism watch, I thought that brick and mortar in Canton in the 15^th century was out of place. But in fact, by the Ming dynasty, although wood still dominated, bricks and stones became common building materials. Judge Dee becomes alarmed at plans of a massacre of the inhabitants of the prosperous port city of Canton and in fact a massacre was committed in 878–879 by the rebel army of Huang Chao. At the end Judge Dee predicts to himself that in the fullness of time he will have to tangle with the ambitious Lady Wu Tsertien, who in fact dates from the Tang era, not the Ming. I know, I know. van Gulik knew what he was doing: artistic license.

The writing is a bit clumsy, the characters cut out of cardboard, the plot twisted, and there’s of lot of talking, not showing. But I still got a kick out of this because of the period details and the variety of social backgrounds of the characters.