Enigma of China (An Inspector Chen Novel) by Qiu Xiaolong

Paperback:  Enigma of China (2013) is the eighth book in the Inspector Chen Novel series and is dedicated to the Chinese netizens who fight for their citizenship in the cyberspace - unimaginable elsewhere - in the face of authoritarian control.

Chief Inspector Chen Cao - a poet by training and inclination - was assigned by the Party to the Shanghai Police Department college.

Now he's a rising cadre in the Party, in line to take over the top political position in the police department, while being one of the most respected policemen.

As such, he's brought in by the Party to sign off on the death of Zhou Keng.

Zhou Keng - son of a major Party member - was head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee when a number of his corrupt practices were exposed on the Internet.

Placed into extralegal detention, Zhou apparently hanged himself while under guard.

The Party is anxious to have Zhou's death declared a suicide, and for the renowned Chief Inspector Chen to sign off on that conclusion, but the sequence of events don't quite add up.

Now Chen will have to decide whether to investigate it as a possible homicide and risk angering powerful people, or to seek the justice that his position requires him to strive for.

About the author:  Qiu Xiaolong is a poet and author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen, as well as Years of Red Dust, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010.  Born and raised in Shanghai, the Cultural Revolution began in his last year of elementary school, and out of school, out of job, he studied English by himself in a local park.  In 1977, he began his studies at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and then the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing.  In 1988, he came to Washington University in St. Louis, U.S. as a Ford foundation fellow to do a project on Eliot, but after the Tiananmen tragedy of 1989, he decided to stay on.  He lives with his family in St Louis, Missouri.  Qiu's Inspector Chen series is a many-faceted study of contemporary China.

The next and ninth book in the Inspector Chen Novel series - Shanghai Redemption - will be released on 28 July 2015.

Rating:  5/5