Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police is a rising star in the new China, which means that politics has a major influence on every aspect of his professional and (mostly nonexistent) personal life. He is renowned as an investigator who has handled a number of "sensitive" cases. Somehow he has managed to walk the very thin line between solving crimes and exposing corruption without antagonizing powerful interests or embarrassing the Party hierarchy. He is also a poet, translator and scholar of some repute. Over his career he has built up a wide array of "connections" whom he can call on for favors, inside information, assistance and political cover.
When one of his most important connections in Beijing calls and offers him an all expenses paid vacation in an exclusive resort that caters to the Party elite, Chen understands this is an invitation he cannot refuse. Comrade Secretary Zhou mentioned, casually, in passing, that Chen also should take this opportunity to look around Wuxi and report his impressions back to Zhou.
The first thing Chen learns about Wuxi is that the city has become a major area of industrial development, and the new factories are causing environmental havoc by discharging untreated toxic waste into Tai Lake, once famous for its clear waters and abundant fish. His informant is a young woman named Shanshan who works as a (token) environmental engineer at Wuxi Number One Chemical Company. The company has been very successful and is on the verge of converting from a state-run enterprise to a private company when its chief executive, Liu Deming, is found murdered in his private apartment near the plant. Shanshan becomes a suspect in the murder because of her connection to Jiang, an environmental activist who has drawn the ire of the Party and the attention of Internal Security by sharing his findings with Western media. Internal Security would like to see Jiang convicted of attenpted blackmail and murder, in order to discredit his accusations.
But Shanshan is sure Jiang is innocent, and Chen agrees that the evidence is unconvincing. Who else had motive and opportunity to kill Liu? Chen uses another of his connections to intervene as discreetly as possible in the local police investigation. He quickly uncovers several much more likely suspects: Liu's estranged wife, his "little secretary" who provides more than business assistance, the deputy manager who looks to take over the company now Liu is dead. As Chen becomes more involved in the matter, and more involved with Shanshan, he begins to wonder about his own motivations, whether his growing attraction to Shanshan is reciprocated, and if there is any possibility of a future for the two of them.
Author Qui Xiaolong was born and raised in Shanghai. He is himself a poet and translator, and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis where he and his family now live. This is the seventh volume in his critically acclaimed Inspector Chen series, set in Shanghai and providing a fascinating inside view of the tensions and contradictions in modern Chinese society.
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