Word: qiu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Decades later, the stirred memory of that photo suggested the plot of Qiu's Red Mandarin Dress, the fifth and latest of his popular, Shanghai-set Inspector Chen detective novels. This time, Qiu's hero, a cop and poet, is on the trail of a serial killer who dresses his female victims in tailored qipao dresses - a macabre gesture freighted with political meaning. As in the previous books, the investigation leads Inspector Chen to a brutal legacy from the past, for even the most vicious of Qiu's criminals are victims of China's bloody history. So, incidentally, are many...
...Qiu's preoccupation with China's tumultuous recent past was foreordained. One of his formative experiences as an author was, after all, ghostwriting a self-criticism for his father, a businessman persecuted during the Red Guards' reign of terror. Qiu says he never set out to write Chinese crime novels. A poet and translator himself - his credits include two books of translated poetry, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (2003) and Evoking Tang (2007), as well as a volume of his own verse, Lines Around China (2003) - Qiu permanently quit China in 1988 to study at Washington University in St. Louis...
...course of duty, Inspector Chen has tackled political corruption (Death of a Red Heroine, 2000) and human trafficking (A Loyal Character Dancer, 2002). Qiu's 2006 mystery, A Case of Two Cities, was a virtual blueprint for the pension scandal that roiled Shanghai's highest political aeries last year and led to the resignation of the city's Communist Party chief. "A cop walks around and knocks on people's doors, asks questions," Qiu says. "It's become a convenient way to write about things I want to explore...
...Qiu's novels have been published in China, but not without some mysterious changes. The city of Shanghai, for instance, is referred to as "H," which manages to sound even more Kafkaesque than anything Qiu could invent. But writing crime novels has allowed him remarkable freedom to limn China's shifting moral standards. "In the past, Chinese people believed in Confucianism," Qiu says. "That's basically an ethical system: what you should do and what you should not do. Then people believed in Mao and communism. In a way, that was also about what you should and should...
...Perhaps reflecting his creator's donnish temperament, Inspector Chen is somewhat ambivalent about the door-knocking and petty politicking that go along with police work. In the course of his investigations, Qiu's hero frequently cites literary theory or quotes Tang dynasty poetry. Chen is less a cop moonlighting as a poet than a poet daylighting...