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.
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