A review by paul_cornelius
The Chinese Gold Murders by Robert van Gulik

4.0

I don't know how to classify these Judge Dee books, after the initial volume which was translated from Chinese. Van Gulik wrote the first few books and had them published in Japanese and Chinese and then English, apparently. But subsequently published the remaining volumes in the series in English. So we have a Dutch orientalist, creating a fictional Chinese detective, based on an actual Chinese historical figure, and most of it appearing in English. However you want to label them, the books seem interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, they have a wonderful sense of time and place. Second, as procedural mysteries they keep your interest, while offering subtle comments on morality and virtue along the way. Quite simply, they're fun to read. Gold Murders I see actually takes some of the plot devices from the initial translation of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, such as the mechanism whereby magistrate Wang is murdered. So too with the structure, where several crimes occur simultaneously. I suppose that these mysteries offer up an opportunity for some people to be outraged at their Saidian Orientalism. So what? That's probably just an excuse for some people to use that particular approach as a cover for secretly enjoying Judge Dee. I'll bet that happens a lot.