Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen Series

China-born author, Qiu Xiaolong, is the Anthony Award-winning creator of the Inspector Chen series, set in 1990s Shanghai. The series, which started in 2000 with Death of a Red Heroine, now has seven installments with the 2012 addition Don’t Cry, Tai Lake, and has been translated into twenty languages. The Washington Post dubbed Don’t Cry, Tai Lake, a “charming and quite political detective novel,” while Booklist declared it “Magnificent.” The Wall Street Journal called Xiaolong’s first installment in the series one of the five best political novels of all time, ranking it with Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Of The Mao Case, a reviewer for Booklist noted that it is “full, as always, of crisp detail and vivid atmospherics evoking contemporary Shanghai.” A Publishers Weekly contributor also had praise for the 2007 series addition, Red Mandarin Dress, pointing to its “first-rate characterizations and elegant portrait of a society attempting to move from rigid Maoist ideologies to an accommodation with capitalism.”

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Crime Tales of Shanghai: Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen Novels

China-born author, Qiu Xiaolong, is the Anthony Award-winning creator of the Inspector Chen series, set in 1990s Shanghai. The series, which started in 2000 with Death of a Red Heroine, now has six installments with the 2009 addition The Mao Case, and has been translated into twenty languages. The Wall Street Journal called Xiaolong’s first novel one of the five best political novels of all time, ranking it with Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Of The Mao Case, a reviewer for Booklist noted that it is “full, as always, of crisp detail and vivid atmospherics evoking contemporary Shanghai.” A Publishers Weekly contributor also had praise for the 2007 series addition, Red Mandarin Dress, pointing to its “first-rate characterizations and elegant portrait of a society attempting to move from rigid Maoist ideologies to an accommodation with capitalism.”

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