11. The Chinese Bell Murders by Robert van Gulik (Historical Mystery) 254 p.

Judge Dee, the protagonist of Robert van Gulik’s series of mysteries set in ancient China, is based on a true historical character. After van Gulik found and translated a Ming-dynasty work featuring the Tang-dynasty judge solving a series of mysteries, he decided to write his own novels along the same lines. The Chinese Bell Murders was the first of these.

The novel opens with a framing narrative, wherein a retired tea merchant of the Ming dynasty, a collector of objects relating to famous crimes, has an unsettling experience in a curio shop. He proceeds to tell the tale of Judge Dee’s arrival in his new district of Poo-yang and his first few cases there.

The brutal rape and murder of a young woman, an old and bitter feud between two wealthy merchant families, and the suspicious powers of a group of Buddhist monks to cure barrenness in rich and attractive women, all provide ample space for Judge Dee to exercise his formidable intellect.

My copy of this book calls Judge Dee “the Sherlock Holmes of Ancient China,” a comparison not without some truth to it. Although he doesn’t use Holmes’s methods, he is often able to deduce facts about a case from very little evidence, or from factors that others have overlooked.

As a window into some aspects of life in Ancient China, The Chinese Bell Murders is quite entertaining. I only find it unfortunate that van Gulik didn’t take it further; I would have liked to see more domestic scenes, for example. I like the very upright, moral Judge Dee, but aside from his performance as a magistrate, the reader doesn’t get much of a glimpse of his personality, or of anyone else’s, for that matter.

The three mysteries solved by Judge Dee were interesting, although the book wouldn’t have been worth reading on that basis alone—it’s the setting, the details about life in another time and place, that made this a worthwhile read.

Naturally, the book focuses on the justice system, which at the time routinely included torture as a means of extracting a confession after a successful investigation, as well as some pretty gruesome forms of capital punishment, which (thankfully) aren’t graphically described.

Van Gulik resists the temptation of imposing his own cultural mores onto Judge Dee, allowing him to be a very honest and moral man who nonetheless oversees many brutalities in the name of justice. A lesser writer might have given him anachronistic guilt about, or opposition to, some of his actions, but van Gulik is wise enough to avoid that trap.

All in all, an interesting mystery set in a historical period I’m not familiar with; I’ll be sure to check out more Judge Dee mysteries.

Pages read: 3,449

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Judge Dee, Robert van Gulik, World Lit Challenge