This is my book from the X pile - but the way it seems to be taking forever to get through it probably has to be mitigated slightly by the autumn challenge. Between days of grape picking, wine making, cat wrangling, garden clearing, and the distractions of a new baby pet pig. Well the book is moving slower than the treacle that felt like it froze overnight out in the produce store (did I mention it's got cold suddenly!)
From the Blurb:
Shanghai in 1990. An ancient city in a country that despite the massacre of Tianamen Square is still in the tight grip of Communist control. Chief Inspector Chen, a poet with a sound instinct for self-preservation, knows the city like few others.
When the body of a prominent Communist party member is found, Chen is told to keep the party authorities informed about every lead.
Opening Lines:
The body was found at 4:40pm, on May 11, 1990 in Baili Canal, an out-of-the-way canal, about twenty miles to the west of Shanghai.
Qiu Xiaolong's Anthony Award-winning debut introduces Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police.
A young “national model worker,” renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—to see justice done.