GoodReads meta-data is 201 pages, rated 3.75 by 16 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: By the numbers.
It is 1990 in the People’s Republic of China following the Tiananmen Square massacre. Inspector Bao goes to see an opera. On his police officer’s salary his ticket puts him in the cheapest of cheap seats. As the luck of crime writing would have it, another patron nearby is murdered in his seat, and, well, a fictional dick has got to do what a fictional dick has got to do and he investigates.
Of course, he is warned off by overlings and that threat causes him to redouble his efforts, and so on. It is an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion and that is among the coppers.
There is much locale and atmosphere of contemporary China and that kept me flipping Kindle pages as the genre clichés piled up.
Two straw horses dominate Bao’s tedious efforts at social criticism: first, is the corruption of the Communist Party which has become even more strident and hypocritical post-Tiananmen and, second, evil capitalism (which is simply equated to money) corrupting the comrades. It is a world of blacks and whites. Reminded me of that Danish kiminiologist who equates anyone with a few Euros to Hitler – Jussi Adler-Olsen.
Mostly Bao, like so many other fictional detectives, is more interested in his own introspection and self-absorption than anything else. ‘I am so fascinating’ would a truthful subtitle for many krimi heroes.
There is much of China, as indicated above, the division between city slickers who breathe smog and country bumpkins who breathe methane, dutiful northerners and slack southerners, real Chinese versus Hong Kongers, and the spectral shadow of Mao and the Cultural Revolution hang over all like a miasma. (Aside, it seemed to this cynical observer that the Trump era bore many similarities to the Cultural Revolution with its celebration of ignorance.)
Some time ago I came across an explanation for the two names Beijing used to bear when transliterated to English: Peping and Peking. One means northern city and other northern capital but I forgot which way around they go.