Pages: 259
Original date of publication: 2013
My copy: 2013 (Penguin)
Why I decided to read:
How I acquired my copy: Phoenix bookstore, May 2013
In January 1937, the body of a young British girl, Pamela
Werner, was found near Peking’s Fox Tower. Although two detectives, one British
and the other Chinese, spent months on the case, the case was never solved
completely, and the case was forgotten in the wake of the invasion of the
Japanese. Frustrated, Pamela’s father, a former diplomat, tried to solve the crime.
His investigation took him into the underbelly of Peking society and uncovered
a secret that was worse than anything he could have imagined.
At first, I thought that this would be a pretty
straightforward retelling of a true crime, but what Paul French (who spent
seven years researching the story) reveals in this book is much more than that.
Foreign society in Peking in the 1930s was stratified, with the British
colonials at the top and the White Russian refugees at the bottom, but somehow
everyone was thrown together in a tightly knit group, unified by a fear of what
was to come.
The story of the murder itself is incredibly absorbing; what
exactly happened on the night of January 8, 1937 that led to a young woman’s
murder and mutilation? Pamela Werner comes across an independent, intelligent
young woman, and her father was relentless in tracking down her murderer—even
though the British government tried to cover it up and the case was never
officially solved. Too, Peking had much greater things to think about at the
time than the murder of a young British girl. French solves the crime, but I
think he uses his imagination a fair amount in describing how the murder played
out. French’s technical writing isn’t particularly good, but he tells an
interesting story. I especially loved the superstition surrounding the Fox
Tower—fox spirits that represent a woman’s ability to seduce and betray. It’s
an interesting parallel, but it wasn’t worked into the story very well.
Comments
I also recently read "People Who Eat Darkness" which is about a true crime in Tokyo, though it's set in the early 2000s. Horrifying yet fascinating.
Take a look at "Sources", and "The case against Prentice", and "Official investigation" and compare it to French's "research".
I was pretty horrified.
Hope you don't mind me sharing?!
Feel free to tweet it, link to the site, if it is of interest to your readers!
Cheers