This book is more than a good read. It's psychologically intriguing and historically informative. Qui Xiaolong makes sure Inspector Chen's character never stagnates, that it changes from novel to novel. The red mandarin dress plot at the center of this latest thriller is seductive, disturbing and entertaining all at the same time. A great novel!

The Red Mandarin Dress is the fifth book in the Inspector Chen series and Xiaolong returns to the story and plot which made the first in the series such a good read. However, that first book, Death of a Red Heroine is still the best in this series. None of the follow up books equals its sense of time and place and more detailed characterizations. Yet this series of books is a guilty pleasure because of the characters and staging, Shanghai in the 1990s as China transforms itself from communism and Cultural Revolution to a kind of corrupt crony capitalism. In Mandarin Dress Xiaolong seems to make the assumption you have read previous books in the series as he spends no time on character introduction and I suggest you begin by reading each in order. The big failing here again is that Xiaolong spends little time in more fully defining the various characters and letting them grow. This book is almost totally a police procedural novel with a plot (killer) the reader can guess at long before Inspector Chen solves the case. But it has always been the getting there rather than the surprise that makes these books work. Xiaolong is not a great writer as he uses sharp sentences without much nuance to move the case/plot along. Yet Chen is still such an interesting invention, here he takes a vacation to write a masters thesis in literature only to be drawn into catching Shanghai's first serial killer. This series might be an acquired taste but I know I will be picking up the next book with the hope that Chen's partner Yu, Yu's wife Peiqin and Chen's new girl friend White Cloud are more fully developed perhaps with their own story becoming a more important part of the next case for Inspector Chen.

To the ranks of such modern-day fictional detectives as Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko and P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh, add Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen. RED MANDARIN DRESS presents Qiu's irrepressible Shanghai police inspector in his fifth crime novel along with his familiar cast of side characters from those earlier works. Like Arkady Renko, Chen is a loner and a thinker, a dogged deducer and a clever intuitionist whose case approach marks him as idiosynchratic among his peers. Like Renko, Chen lives alone, dresses somewhat lackadaisically, appeases his superiors just enough so he can ignore them, and generally follows the proverbial beat of his own drummer. Like Adam Dalgliesh, Chen is a literary detective, well educated and given to studying and writing poetry.

RED MANDARIN DRESS opens with the appearance of a young woman's murdered body, found posed in a flowerbed on a very public Shanghai street. The dead woman, Jasmine, was a hotel worker, living an utterly nondescript life, but she is found wearing a torn red mandarin dress, usually called a qipao or cheongsam, in the classic Chinese style: high collar, full length, body hugging, side slit to the thigh. Hers is a vintage design, however, dating back to the days before the Cultural Revolution. Exactly one week later, another young woman is found murdered, dressed the same way and left in another very public Shanghai location. Another week passes, and a third body appears, and then a fourth, one of Chen's associates who had agreed to work undercover. At the same time Shanghai is gripped by its first publicly reported serial murder case, Inspector Chen is asked to follow another case involving public corruption in a real estate development. He is also experiencing a sort of dual existential and career crisis. Should he continue as a police detective or return to his first intellectual love, Tang Dynasty poetry, for which he is trying to write a paper analyzing the treatment of women in three such poems?

As the detective story moves inexorably toward its climactic face-off between Chen and the murderer, Qiu treats the reader with a fascinating introduction to Tang Dynasty poetry, a core element of Chinese culture. He juxtaposes Chen's paper's theme of "thirsty illness," a literal reference to diabetes but a metaphorical reference to romantic love, with the killer's own thirsty illness for revenge. Along the way, Qiu inserts additional elements of decidedly non-Chinese Freudian psychological theory into Chen's search for a serial killer's motives. Chen is no Sherlock Holmes, magically pulling a rabbit out of a hatful of clues; rather, he is more bloodhound, catching a faint scent and following it determinedly to its eventful conclusion.

What makes Qiu Xiaolong's stories stand out as more than just mystery novels is his exemplary folding of Chinese history abd culture into his work. References to Tang Dynasty poetry and the mass criticism of Wang Guangmei (as wife of President Liu Shaoqi, China's "First Lady") during the Cultural Revolution bring elements of those eras to life and introduce the reader to their place in the Chinese psyche. Inspector Chen's interactions with other characters exemplify such fascinating aspects of Chinese life as the importance of connections (guangxi) and the exchanging of favors. Qiu delves as well into the mystique of Chinese/Asian women as threatening to men, the predatory femme fatale. The role of food in Chinese culture also plays a major role in RED MANDARIN DRESS, including the book's climax that takes place over what has to be one of literature's strangest dinner menus.

Readers may want to take special note of this book's dedication: "To my elder brother, Xiaowei - but for luck, what happened to him during the Cultural Revolution could have happened to me." It is more than coincidental that this line repeats itself at the end of Chapter 30. Qiu Xiaolong, who has lived in the Un

It's regrettable that Qiu Xiaolong ran out of credible plots two novels back, and started to substitute melodrama and sensationalism instead. Chen Cao was once a credible, and even likeable, character, but seems to have become an excuse for poorly contrived soap operas rather than detective novels with any convincing or challenging features. These last two novels have read like a badly written guide to recent Chinese history, mediocre cuisine, and the nasty habits of the Chinese entrepreneurial class. Too often, the "information" provided is gratuitous, does not move the plot forward, and leaves a sour taste in the mouth. A case in point is the live monkey brain dish that Qiu introduces in Red Mandarin Dress. Other than being revolting, it does nothing to advance the plot forward, and suggests an author who simply does not know how to construct an exciting mystery. Chen's conversations are increasingly pedantic monologues, while his insight into the Chinese femme fatale is so massively cliched that it is a joke to suggest that Chen is any sort of scholar. I'd suggest reading the first two novels in the series, and then forgetting the rest. Don't waste time on a writer who is peddling exotic Chinese soap operas rather than worthwhile, intelligent fiction.

The charming and inscrutable Inspector Chen series continues with, perhaps, Shanghai's first serial murder case. Torn between being a good cop and indulging his literary bent, Chen takes a brief vacation to research and write a paper on classical Chinese romantic literature. Meanwhile a murderer who dresses his female victims in a red Mandarin dress has emerged, and Chen also is asked to look into a politically charged real estate corruption case.

Somehow all these unrelated elements seem to tie together as Chen on the sidelines comes to grips with the various clues. As in previous entries in the series, the author uses the vast changes in China--culturally, economically, socially and otherwise--to provide an authenticity o the mystery. The failings of human nature, as well as the Cultural Revolution, play a pivotal part in the story.

While the plot doesn't move forward at a fast pace, it does develop step-by-step, leading Chen (and the reader) toward a logical conclusion. As usual, Chen is an iconoclast, using all his wiles including Freud (unheard of in China) to analyze the case, as well as fending off potential hazards of a political nature, avoiding offending the Party. Chen is no Charlie Chan, thank the Lord, but his knowledge of Confucian philosophy, Buddhism, contemporary China, Maoism and other aspects of Modern China is both informative and droll. A joy to read, and I can't wait for the next installment.