Jonathan Mirsky
Death beneath Fox Tower
Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China
By Paul French
Viking 260pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
At last! A thriller-diller that thrills. A whodunnit that puzzles. And it’s true, too. After over seventeen years in China, Paul French can fairly be called an old China hand. Although he lives in Shanghai, he knows Peking – now Beijing – and its sometimes dark history, and has a style worthy of Raymond Chandler: he uses ‘muscle’ for bodyguards in just the right way. And in his extensive research French, almost by luck – but luck favours the keen – uncovered a real-life septuagenarian sleuth who out-Holmesed Holmes.
No murder could have been gorier. One north China winter morning in January 1937 a young Western woman’s body is discovered near Peking’s Fox Tower, feared by many Chinese as a place of evil spirits. She has been bludgeoned, cut and scratched. Even the senior investigators, a British, Scotland Yard-trained
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger
'The eight years he has spent in solitary confinement have had a devastating impact on his mental health ... human rights organisations believe his detention is punishment for his critical views.'
@lucyjpop on the Egyptian activist and poet Ahmed Douma.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ahmed-douma