The Chinese Maze Murders

by Robert van Gulik

Genres: Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 336
Series: Judge Dee Mysteries #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

Poisoned plums, a cryptic scroll picture, passionate love letters, and a hidden murderer with a penchant for torturing and killing women lead Judge Dee to the heart of the Governor’s garden maze and the answers to three interwoven mysteries. The Chinese Maze Murders represents Robert van Gulik’s first venture into writing suspense novels after the success of Dee Gong An, his translation of an anonymous Chinese detective novel from the sixteenth century.

I was very curious about Robert van Gulik’s The Chinese Maze Murders after reading a little bit about how they came to be: after translating Dee Goong An, van Gulik was very interested in bringing classic Chinese detective stories to a modern audience, but found the stories (according to his preface to this volume) lacking in interest for a modern audience, either Chinese or Western. As a result, he wrote this book, which was then translated into Japanese and published in Japan, before being translated into Chinese. Only later was this English version released.

I think he does a fairly good job of using traditional Chinese stories and motifs while writing something that feels culturally comprehensible and interesting. There are various parts of the structure that are traditional, like the resolution of all the cases at once and the chapter featuring the punishment of the culprits, while he steered away from too much magic (which would’ve frequently been a part of the original stories).

Obviously, it’s hard to judge this in terms of the Chinese antecedents, but relating it to the crime fiction of his contemporaries, it fits in reasonably well — maybe a little old-fashioned and more akin to Sherlock Holmes than to other 1950s crime, but it doesn’t feel like it’d be unrecognisable or difficult to read at all (except maybe some issues keeping track of names; I didn’t have trouble, given I read danmei so I’m in practice).

A note on content, though: there is a plot in which an older woman tries to imprison younger girls out of sexual interest, which the author discusses in a note. Apparently it’s a not uncommon plot element, and he puts the prevalence of “sapphism” (that’s the term he uses) down to polygyny. There’s also sexual slavery and in general not amazing attitudes toward women, which again is I think related mostly but not wholly to the source stories and what van Gulik felt was fitting. There are also some stereotypes about and othering of Uighurs .

Overall, I found it really interesting, and I enjoyed learning about the context of it as well.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)