| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Mystery & Thrillers |
| Author: | Robert Hans van Gulik |
In this story, Judge Dee was appointed to the city of Pei-chow (北州), a fictional location. Pei-chow was once at the frontier of the Tang Empire, but Imperial expansion had pushed the borders further north by 200 miles. His last appointment being a true border town of Lan-fang (兰芳), Judge Dee was finding his new assignment rather mundane when three vexing cases occurred in quick successions, testing not only his detective abilities, but also requiring his to put his professional reputation and life at stake.
The Case of the Headless Corpse saw the two Yeh brothers accusing their brother-in-law Pan Feng of murdering his wife, who was their sister. The body was discovered without a head.
The Case of the Paper Cat took its name from the clue left behind by a murdered pugilist, in the form of the seven-puzzle pieces assembled in a shape resembling a cat.
Unlike the previous two cases, the Case of the Murdered Merchant was one which was not an official case but an old, apparently natural, death which the Judge himself suspected to have been murder. The problem was he could find no proof it was murder, even though he took a risk and ordered an exhumation to re-examine the body for signs of poisoning. Since he had no evidence of foul play, his insistence of opening a case against the widow and exhuming the body would demand he pay for it in the most severe manner.
One final case which was already in progress when the story began was the case of the missing girl.
All the above cases were inspired by accounts of Chinese tales of crimes such as Tang Yin Bi Si.
What made this novel sad was the re-interpretation by van Gulik to flesh out the cases, giving very strong characterisations and created a moral delimna for the Judge to convict someone who had committed a crime to save herself, but voluntarily hinted her modus operandi to the Judge to enable him not only to solve a crime, but save his life and professional standing, knowing full well that the Judge would not overlook to question her own familiarity with the criminal technique.
The title of the book was a giveaway clue to the modus operandi, and in Chinese accounts, there were 2 versions to the case. One was resolved by the judge's own keen observation, the other was through a similar hint as used by van Gulik in this book.
Van Gulik took the second version and developed it further, adding significant human drama to cause the readers to empathise with conflicting emotions between serving the blindfolded Lady of Justice and the natural human reaction to take matters into their own hands.
For followers of van Gulik's Judge Dee series, this is also one where a major recurring character is killed off. I am not sure why van Gulik chose to do that. The death of the character served little in the way of solving the case, but it seemed that van Gulik himself experienced some sort of crisis in real life that he transpolated into his protagonist.
The conclusion of the novel saw the Judge feeling worn out, emotionally exhausted by the decisions he had to make, the loss of his long-time companion, and a sense of loneliness that could not go away. It was a stark contrast to the previous endings where he enjoyed a strong sense of satisfaction of having done his job and serving the people and serving justice.
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