It’s been a month or so since I’ve gotten any Sunday Salon reading in, what with trips to Seattle for Independence Day and my birthday and other distractions. Today was a lazy day on the couch, sipping tea and reading Qiu Xiaolong’s A Case of Two Cities. Unfortunately this has not been an enjoyable read.
My memories, somewhat faded, of the first books in the Inspector Chen series were of solid mystery writing set in a different culture. The fourth installment has jettisoned solid writing. Inspector Chen has jumped the shark.
Inspector Chen gets a call from a high level party cadre in Beijing. He is to head up the Shanghai investigation of Xing Xing, a corrupt businessman who has fled to the United States and sought asylum. Chen’s job is to root out the rats in Xing network based in Shanghai.
So, here’s a list of things that pissed me off or annoyed me about the book:
- Could he quote any more poetry? Chen has always loved the poetry, since Xiaolong decided to make him both a published poet as well as a police officer. This time around though every other paragraph begins with
This reminded Chen of a couplet from a Hong dynasty poem
. It’s nice to have something more erudite in my mystery novels, but this much is just boring. - Chen’s investigative method is to harass someone who might know some information, not get the information from them, let them go to collect information on his behalf. Except for one brief portion in Los Angeles, Chen never does any investigating of his own.
- None of the bad guy’s plots make sense. At all.
- The book’s plot moves slower than an elderly person with a walker. My grandmother would figure this stuff out faster then Chen.
- Xiaolong can’t decide if he wants to have Chen work alone or with someone else. When he does decide to work with other people, it’s not fellow police officers except for one subordinate. It’s inappropriate people like his subordinate’s wife Peiquin. Why and how she ends up perusing transcripts of cell phone calls by the bad guys to figure things out, I don’t know.
- Speaking of cell phone transcripts, where the hell did those come from? It’s like magic. Secret authorities magically know who to tap and transcribe. I’m not even going to get into how unlikely this is legally speaking in either country. I’ll assume it’s legal. Chen gives a U.S. Marshall a phone number and the next day he receives in return a complete transcript of the calls on that number. Not just a list of numbers called. Complete transcript. Including calls made just after the pay-as-you-go phone was purchased two weeks earlier.
- The ending is nothing. It’s worse than deus ex machina. Chen sits down to think after everything has happened and, with no new information, puts together how the plot worked. It’s
I could have had a V-8
.
I could go on, but it’s just getting me more riled up. Right now this book is in serious contention for worst book I’ve read this year. It’s that bad. Congratulations on getting a deal with a major publisher, Mr. Xiaolong! Now please write something good.
Title: A case of two cities
Author: Qiu Xiaolong
Series: Inspector Chen; 4
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Minotaur / Holtzbrinck
Format: Hardcover
Length: 307 p.
Publication date: December 2006
ISBN-10: 0-312-35985-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35985-0
Subject: Chen, Inspector (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Police — China — Shanghai — Fiction
Subject: Shanghai (China) — Fiction
Subject: Corruption investigation — Fiction
LC classification: PS3553.H537C37 2006
One Comment
Some books simply turn out to be trash!
SS 1: Review of Shelf Monkey
SS 2: List of acquired books