Great Reads for Great Readers

 

City of Ice, by Brian Klingborg.

 

          This would be a pretty standard Crime novel, were it not for its setting:  the People’s Republic of China, specifically in the North East city of Harbin, known as the City of Ice for its frigid winter temperatures.  And the place that young people flock to from the constraints of their country villages, where there is no work and certainly no fun;  where their families all still follow the ancient traditions of worshipping their ancestors, regardless of exhortations of leaders old and new to embrace the modern age.

            Inspector Lu Fei is the deputy Chief of Police in one such village, Raven Valley;  he has been sent there from Harbin by his Boss in the Harbin Police Department, ostensibly as a promotion but they both know that their enmity is the main reason for his exile:  jealousy and corruption flourish as always, regardless of whichever regime gains power – Communism has not altered people’s base emotions and as always, it’s not what one knows, but whom.  Well, Lu is one of the few incorruptibles in a department that has no place for him, hence his ‘transfer’.  There is nothing on which to test his formidable detecting talents apart from your common-or-garden chicken thefts, domestics, and drunk-and-disorderlies, so Lu’s life could hardly be regarded as action-packed – until the discovery of a young woman’s body at her late mother’s house, gruesomely murdered.  Yang Fenfang, aged 23, had come home from Harbin to arrange her mother’s funeral;  now she is dead, too, with heart, lungs and liver removed:  Raven Valley has progressed from sleepy backwater to notorious hideaway for a sick killer, and it isn’t long before Lu finds after careful checking, that there have been several similar crimes committed in Harbin.

            Brian Klingborg lived and worked in the People’s Republic of China for several years.  He has a prestigious MA from Harvard University majoring in Chinese Cultural Anthropology, so he knows whereof he speaks when he writes about PRC mores and customs, ancient and modern, on which his complex plot depends.  His characters are entirely credible and he has a nice line in humour just when it is needed.  I have to say that I did guess Who Done It about halfway through, but am willing to forgive that for the quotations from Chairman Mao which start every chapter, and the almost documentary explanations of the political and moral infrastructure in place in today’s modern China.  I hope we haven’t seen the last of Lu!  FIVE STARS