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A review by vanessakm
A Loyal Character Dancer by Qiu Xiaolong
3.0
I really struggled with what to rate this book. This is one of those times when 3.5 stars would be more accurate. I feel guilty giving the book only three but four was just a bit too many.
This is the second in Qiu Xiaolong's series about a Shanghai police inspector, Chen Cao. In this entry, Cao stumbles on the body of an axe murder victim in Bund Park the same day he is assigned to babysit a female US Marshal who has come to collect the wife of a witness in a human smuggling case. Her visit marks a landmark cooperation between the US and China. Party politics and the successful navigation thereof play a huge role in this book like the first and also adds assorted triad gangs into the mix. This book has a bit more of a mystery element than the first book, which was a police procedural.
Like the first book, the Shanghai atmosphere is fantastic. I learned so much from this series about China in this time period (approximately one year after Tiananmen Square.) The characters discuss topics ranging from the Cultural Revolution's continuing after-effects to overcrowding to government corruption. My favorite character, Detective Yu, returns in this book and provides a classic double-take moment. While he is interrogating a prostitute about the whereabouts of a gang member, she mentions she was coerced into a threesome with him and another triad gang member. Yu tells her she's in big trouble now as group sex is expressly illegal. Wait-what?? Try learning that tidbit from most travelogues. The addition of the US Marshal gives the reader the chance to see Americans through Chinese eyes which was my favorite part of the book.
Alas, this also was where I had some minor complaints. I liked the relationship between the Marshal, Catherine Rohn, and Cao. But occasionally she said or did something really daft (like arguing with Cao about the One Child Policy, something she would most certainly have been aware of as someone with a degree in China Studies) and it just annoyed me. Also, when I read the first book I found the dialogue stilted but I assumed that Xiaolong was attempting to render Chinese into English so the reader could get the genuine flow of the language rather than an Anglicized version. I still think maybe that's the case and while I appreciate it, some of the conversations are distractingly stilted. Was it necessary to have Cao and Rohn address each other by their full titles multiple times in the course of every conversation?
I do enjoy reading this series and the chance to learn more about China from the inside and while I have minor complaints, I do recommend it and will continue to read it.
This is the second in Qiu Xiaolong's series about a Shanghai police inspector, Chen Cao. In this entry, Cao stumbles on the body of an axe murder victim in Bund Park the same day he is assigned to babysit a female US Marshal who has come to collect the wife of a witness in a human smuggling case. Her visit marks a landmark cooperation between the US and China. Party politics and the successful navigation thereof play a huge role in this book like the first and also adds assorted triad gangs into the mix. This book has a bit more of a mystery element than the first book, which was a police procedural.
Like the first book, the Shanghai atmosphere is fantastic. I learned so much from this series about China in this time period (approximately one year after Tiananmen Square.) The characters discuss topics ranging from the Cultural Revolution's continuing after-effects to overcrowding to government corruption. My favorite character, Detective Yu, returns in this book and provides a classic double-take moment. While he is interrogating a prostitute about the whereabouts of a gang member, she mentions she was coerced into a threesome with him and another triad gang member. Yu tells her she's in big trouble now as group sex is expressly illegal. Wait-what?? Try learning that tidbit from most travelogues. The addition of the US Marshal gives the reader the chance to see Americans through Chinese eyes which was my favorite part of the book.
Alas, this also was where I had some minor complaints. I liked the relationship between the Marshal, Catherine Rohn, and Cao. But occasionally she said or did something really daft (like arguing with Cao about the One Child Policy, something she would most certainly have been aware of as someone with a degree in China Studies) and it just annoyed me. Also, when I read the first book I found the dialogue stilted but I assumed that Xiaolong was attempting to render Chinese into English so the reader could get the genuine flow of the language rather than an Anglicized version. I still think maybe that's the case and while I appreciate it, some of the conversations are distractingly stilted. Was it necessary to have Cao and Rohn address each other by their full titles multiple times in the course of every conversation?
I do enjoy reading this series and the chance to learn more about China from the inside and while I have minor complaints, I do recommend it and will continue to read it.