CRIME WRITING, or Detection, Large and Small
Part I
Bronwyn Mills
If you're not careful while reading detective fiction, you're liable to learn something. While taking the reader for a ride before solving the mystery, the best writers in the field have something to say, about a city, a profession, a just cause, a moral climate.
- NYTimes Book Review, 1992
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I have just discovered there is a whole category of crime novels, called historical mysteries. I.e. these are set in a period other than our own. I had not particularly set out to focus my reading in the genre on these. In fact, among my more recent reads in the crime department have been the novels of Qiu Xiaolong, a Chinese writer now living in St. Louis and situating his books in post-Mao, capitalism-red-in-tooth-and-claw China. Not exactly another century. The detective is a cop, Inspector Cao Chen, with a gourmet appetite and an unfortunate nose for corruption. I say "unfortunate" because the trail to solving the crime often leads through the byways trod by "Big Bucks" (basically Chinese nouveau riche) and “HCC” (High [Party] Cadre’s Children) and Inspector Chen does not always arrive at a solution unscathed.* In Shanghai Redemption, based in part on a real scandal in today's China, however, there is a comment in Qiu Xialong's book which both reinforces the image of the Inspector as a man of unfortunate integrity but also, in so doing, hints at a subject I want to go into in more detail:
...Xiahou explained, ‘You mentioned Chief Inspector Chen. Now, you must have heard about “singing the red,” the movement to make people sing patriotic songs. I could have been thrown in jail for refusing to have my company sing these songs like rituals. It was Chen that spoke out for me. Mind you, he didn’t even know about me, he was just speaking out as a honest cop. He’s a qingguan—like Judge Bao or Judge Dee.’"
“Qingguan,” Chen murmured. In ancient China, qingguan meant incorruptible officials, those rare, practically nonexistent officials who were not the product of the system, rather an aberration of it.
Aha! History, rooted in the oral. Learning as apprenticeship—a nod to contemporary writer, Qiu Xialong's lineage. The very popular Judge Dee stories emerged out of a particular Chinese love of the crime story, including early, preliterate folklore. Judge Bao, in terms of lineage, preceded the very popular and semi-fictional Confucian Judge Dee; but it is only the latter I wish to explore here. Tales about Dee previous, and accessible, to English readers are based on the real Di Renjie, a county magistrate and statesman of the Tang court, who lived roughly around 630–700 AD. When later written down in folk novel form, the stories emerged full of Ming dynasty (1368–1644) anachronisms. Then a 20th century Dutch diplomat and sinophile, Robert van Gulik, found an 18th century version of one of those folk novels in a bookstore in Tokyo. He translated and published it in 1949 as the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, suggesting that someone should take inspiration from those stories and write some more. No one leapt to the challenge, so van Gulik himself began writing his own series in English, based on Judge Dee's exploits, though set in Tang times, complete with anachronistic Ming detail. He notably captures the life of pre-revolutionary China as well as being faithful to the spirit of Judge Dee, if less so to the times, and the stories about him.
Thus far, I have read about seven or eight of the 17 - 18 Judge Dee detective novels, including van Gulik's initiating translation (above.) While somewhat formulaic—perhaps I should say, "faithful" to the conventions of those older Chinese detective stories—Dee gradually emerges as much more than a cardboard figure. Notably, as the character of the magistrate/detective persists throughout a whole series, we gradually see more complexity in his person. Caveat emptor: Readers may also be a bit jarred by what was normal for the times; as several reviews of the series indicate, polygamy was then de rigeur, as was the purchase of women to serve as courtesans and prostitutes. However, Judge Dee is most upright, even though with three or four wives his personal life is a bit complicated.
In terms of the operations of state justice, a Chinese judge/magistrate had the duty of not only adjudicating; but also, acting as a detective, even in some cases, going out into the streets in disguise to ferret out clues. Generally the stories interweave the solution of three separate crimes, which Dee solves with the help of his three assistants, whom he rescued from a life of petty crime and enlisted to help serve justice. In fact, van Gulik skillfully lets his readers know just enough background about Dee's assistants in several books, without rote repetition, so that anyone picking up a later novel in which the original story of their enlistment was not told, would not be confused.
It is also important to make note of Chinese forensics here; for the mandatory inclusion of autopsy, for example, is not invoking a much later or Western invention. In the 13th century, in fact, the first recorded example of criminal forensics re: a murder weapon took place in China. A body had been found in a field, hacked to death, and it was ascertained by the marks on the corpse that the weapon was a sickle. All the sickles of the adjacent peasant village were collected and laid out in the field, and the murder weapon identified when several blowflies landed on one in particular, attracted by the minute, invisible to human eyes, traces of blood. In several novels, as in earlier Western accounts, fictional and real, the favored murder weapon was poison: for example, in one of my favorite of the series, The Chinese Nail Murders, a master of martial arts is found dead in the public baths. From the remains of a shattered cup, a jasmine flower is identified; but this is not the sort of tea served there. Dee suspects this flower as the vehicle by which a poison powder may have been injected into the tea, and he has all samples of tea, broken pieces, and above all the flower, carefully collected and sent a pharmacist who, after several tests, identifies the poison as powdered Snake Tree root, a lethal poison used commonly in minute doses for weak hearts. Another success for early Chinese forensics.
Dee's is a coldly just, but not squeamish world: when a body was discovered, the routine was, as noted, to conduct an autopsy, and a public one, or at the least one in which the family was called upon to witness. The corpse was then encoffined until the judge gave the go-ahead for the funeral. Faced with incontrovertible evidence, the criminal had to confess in order to complete the conviction, if not willingly, with the help of some rather brutal torture.
As strict Confucianism dictated, the pre-Revolutionary ideal public servant was unswervingly, instinctively loyal to the Imperium; and, indeed, in The Chinese Lake Murders, Dee even manages to head off a major overthrow of the Emperor. Thus, unlike more contemporary crime novels, the magistrate/detective was not really regarded as "an abberation of the system." He was the exact opposite of an outsider; unlike the rare oddball policemen in British crime stories—Morse in the British television series or Ngaio Marsh's "gentleman detective," Roderick Alleyn—the magistrate/detective is routinely expected to be educated, a cultivated and wise embodiment of how one should be, and behave, in order to serve the state. His morals are ideally above reproach. Crowds part when his palaquin arrives; and only the hardened crook lacks the proper respect of his person and office. Mind, though not being an aficianado of poetry, Dee's suspects and subsidiary characters may be somewhere on the continuum of being students of literature; in fact, such associations are sometimes expressed as testifying to that person's exemplary character: Soandso teaches, is a practitioner, is preparing for his examinations, in the literary arts. Nonetheless, there are multiple instances of Dee revealing by some remark, or other, that despite his own prejudices, he too is a cultivated man.
Further, the critique that a crime novel of our day might make of the corrupt and/or decadent state, the flabbiness of public morals or the rancid lives of a certain class plays out differently in the Judge Dee series. Qiu Xialong is unabashedly critical of China's post Maoist government; au contraire, in the pre-Revolutionary world of Judge Dee, the magistrate/detective is an uncritical extension of the state. Indeed, van Gulik points out that the majority of the popular Chinese crime novels in pre-Revolutionary China were written by Confucian scholars; that, in turn, implies a cohesion with the Imperium. As Dee himself says, in The Haunted Monastery,
I prefer to keep to the practical wisdom of our Master Confucius, who teaches us our simple, everyday duties to our fellow-
men and to our society. And to requite good with good, and bad with justice!
At the end of that particular novel, the Judge also recommends that one of the characters, a young confused poet, now turn to the Confucian classics and take his examinations in Confucian literature. What is implicit here is a the maintenance of well-ordered society, culminating in the Emperor's rule, not the Augean repair of one small piece in a jigsaw already falling to pieces. When, in The Chinese Nail Murders, Dee orders a body to be exhumed to ascertain if the man had been poisoned, the judge is warned that, should he have ordered this mistakenly, he will be tried and punished by death. When no damning evidence is found when the body is dug up, Dee writes his resignation letter and is ready to send it off; but a change in the pursuit of justice subsequently vindicates him. In the example of erroneous exhumations, we must conclude that as Dee is an arm of the state, his error not only violated the religious principles of the dead person's family, but even worse, it would have brought shame upon the Emperor and the Emperor's regime. Hence, the severity of the sentence. It is not, as Detective Chen crosses the corrupt but powerful, an unexplained being kicked upstairs, an ostensible promotion that really removes him as a threat to a society already "bent."
In view of the traditional tales' "pronounced partiality to Confucianism," author van Gulik further informs us that he has replicated this bias in his Judge Dee novels. Indeed, the context which leads up to Dee's comment above, is the Judge's opinion on Taoism:
Taoism penetrates deep into the mysteries of life and death, but its abstruse knowledge may inspire that evil, inhuman pride
that turns a man into a cruel fiend. And its profound philosophy about balancing the male and the female elements may
degenerate into unspeakable rites with women. [This refers to the content of certain events in the novel.] The question is, Tan
Gan [one of his assistants,] whether we are meant to discover the mystery of life, and whether that discovery would make us
happier. Taoism has many elevated thoughts; it teaches us to requite good with good, and bad also with good. But the
instruction to requite bad with good belongs to a better age than we are living in now.... It's a dream of the future, a beautiful
dream—yet only a dream. I prefer....(etc.)
As as an exponent of this intensely pragmatic, perhaps slightly stodgy Confucianism, Dee also looks down upon Buddhists: their faith is referred to in The Haunted Monastery as a "Western import," though in this case "the West" is India. (In the Chinese Maze Murders, Dee makes a mild critique of the "workaholism" of Confucian officialdom, but he continues to adhere to that creed.) And what perhaps unintentionally evolves out of some rather cursory representations of Confucianism's two rival creeds, in van Gulik's hands, is an avoidance of one of the classic tropes of traditional Chinese tales: that which a waggish friend has dubbed "woo-woo." No matter the occasional stretch to account for various transgressions, no deus ex machina for you, Judge Dee. Indeed, the whole of Haunted Monastery rejects the notion of supernatural causation. Reason, following the clues, paying attention—these are what reveal the perpetrator(s) of the crime, not "woo-woo."
Pragmatism, to a large extent, rules even in "requiting the bad with justice." (In the epitome of pragmatism, "justice," please notice, is not ipso facto a synonym for "good.") While this may spoil The Haunted Monastery for some readers (I shan't ruin others,} I offer another example of the clear-cut rules which a magistrate must follow. Dee brings his assistants along, not only to help him proceed with his investigations, but also as, according to the state, the confession of a crime is only legitimate if there are, minimally, two witnesses. When in this novel, he finally identifies and confronts the perpetrator, his assistants are not with him. Face to face with the perp, Dee hears a full account but cannot make an arrest; and the crimes are fairly appalling: rape, three murders, an attempted few more, bribery—the list is long. However, Judge Dee accomplishes "justice" per osa, by bear: tricking the perpetrator and locking him into a small chamber with a very large, ill tempered bear. That in, and despite, our complicated and disheveled 21st century, would be considered vigilantism, law enforcement without legal authority. We are, I confess, shocked, although this act is evidently permissable under the code of Confucianism. But that act also adds to the three-dimensionality of the Judge: this is the first in the series where Dee gets cross, complains of a cold, of weariness and aches and pains, and, to say the least, shows that he has clay feet. The state, be reminded, does not.
And while the state and its Emperor are considered to be perfect and of necessity must remain unblemished by a bumbling servant, the world in which the crime takes place remains foul. Among other books, The Red Pavillion portrays an ambiance for prostitution and courtesanship which may jar the contemporary reader, despite the disapproval given the setting by Judge Dee. While historically interesting, it is not van Gulik's bes. And though in both contemporary and older crime novels, the dilemma is, yes, one of morality—what is right and what is wrong and how can the world torn apart by a crime (even the world of sexual slavery) be restored to balance?—an important difference is where the site of the corruption and decay is located. Contemporarily, Xialong locates it in the decadent elements of the current Chinese government. Van Gulik's novels, via Judge Dee, variously locate it in both Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, among the impoverished and avaricious, once among Korean businessmen (Korea, at that time, had been recently conquered by China and was under Chinese rule,) among persons bent upon personal revenge for a perceived wrong, in the demi-monde of crime and slease itself, and, more rarely, in the individual person of a corrupt official. It is never, never situated in the Imperial government itself.
It is, however, a credit to van Gulik that the niave reader is not misled into believing all sorts of nonsense about China and the Chinese through Western cartoon characters like Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu, both but the tip of the dectection iceberg in early 20th century Western-authored crime novels featuring rather racist depictions of Asian characters. As I mentioned, van Gulik was a Sinologist. He knew Mandarin. He was a diplomat who spent a significant amount of time observing traditional, pre-Revolutionary Chinese life. He knew his history and historical periods; and he admired the Chinese people. While at first some of the Dee novels might seem slightly flat, these books are enjoyably read as a portrait of detection with integrity and compassion, with flawed institutions and practices that we reject—slavery, the diminshed role of women, certain religious prejudices—but one whose history and accomplishments still deserve our respect. In reading them, dear reader, we all might learn something.
* In a recent February 2018, BBC Newsnight interview, regarding the intent of the present Chinese president to extend his term in office indefinitely, both Chinese interviewees (one working at London School of Economics, SOAS, and both experts,) referred to the HCC, using yet another term also employed by Xialong--as "princelings." It was rather interesting to already know what they were referring to.
Thus far, I have read about seven or eight of the 17 - 18 Judge Dee detective novels, including van Gulik's initiating translation (above.) While somewhat formulaic—perhaps I should say, "faithful" to the conventions of those older Chinese detective stories—Dee gradually emerges as much more than a cardboard figure. Notably, as the character of the magistrate/detective persists throughout a whole series, we gradually see more complexity in his person. Caveat emptor: Readers may also be a bit jarred by what was normal for the times; as several reviews of the series indicate, polygamy was then de rigeur, as was the purchase of women to serve as courtesans and prostitutes. However, Judge Dee is most upright, even though with three or four wives his personal life is a bit complicated.
In terms of the operations of state justice, a Chinese judge/magistrate had the duty of not only adjudicating; but also, acting as a detective, even in some cases, going out into the streets in disguise to ferret out clues. Generally the stories interweave the solution of three separate crimes, which Dee solves with the help of his three assistants, whom he rescued from a life of petty crime and enlisted to help serve justice. In fact, van Gulik skillfully lets his readers know just enough background about Dee's assistants in several books, without rote repetition, so that anyone picking up a later novel in which the original story of their enlistment was not told, would not be confused.
It is also important to make note of Chinese forensics here; for the mandatory inclusion of autopsy, for example, is not invoking a much later or Western invention. In the 13th century, in fact, the first recorded example of criminal forensics re: a murder weapon took place in China. A body had been found in a field, hacked to death, and it was ascertained by the marks on the corpse that the weapon was a sickle. All the sickles of the adjacent peasant village were collected and laid out in the field, and the murder weapon identified when several blowflies landed on one in particular, attracted by the minute, invisible to human eyes, traces of blood. In several novels, as in earlier Western accounts, fictional and real, the favored murder weapon was poison: for example, in one of my favorite of the series, The Chinese Nail Murders, a master of martial arts is found dead in the public baths. From the remains of a shattered cup, a jasmine flower is identified; but this is not the sort of tea served there. Dee suspects this flower as the vehicle by which a poison powder may have been injected into the tea, and he has all samples of tea, broken pieces, and above all the flower, carefully collected and sent a pharmacist who, after several tests, identifies the poison as powdered Snake Tree root, a lethal poison used commonly in minute doses for weak hearts. Another success for early Chinese forensics.
Dee's is a coldly just, but not squeamish world: when a body was discovered, the routine was, as noted, to conduct an autopsy, and a public one, or at the least one in which the family was called upon to witness. The corpse was then encoffined until the judge gave the go-ahead for the funeral. Faced with incontrovertible evidence, the criminal had to confess in order to complete the conviction, if not willingly, with the help of some rather brutal torture.
As strict Confucianism dictated, the pre-Revolutionary ideal public servant was unswervingly, instinctively loyal to the Imperium; and, indeed, in The Chinese Lake Murders, Dee even manages to head off a major overthrow of the Emperor. Thus, unlike more contemporary crime novels, the magistrate/detective was not really regarded as "an abberation of the system." He was the exact opposite of an outsider; unlike the rare oddball policemen in British crime stories—Morse in the British television series or Ngaio Marsh's "gentleman detective," Roderick Alleyn—the magistrate/detective is routinely expected to be educated, a cultivated and wise embodiment of how one should be, and behave, in order to serve the state. His morals are ideally above reproach. Crowds part when his palaquin arrives; and only the hardened crook lacks the proper respect of his person and office. Mind, though not being an aficianado of poetry, Dee's suspects and subsidiary characters may be somewhere on the continuum of being students of literature; in fact, such associations are sometimes expressed as testifying to that person's exemplary character: Soandso teaches, is a practitioner, is preparing for his examinations, in the literary arts. Nonetheless, there are multiple instances of Dee revealing by some remark, or other, that despite his own prejudices, he too is a cultivated man.
Further, the critique that a crime novel of our day might make of the corrupt and/or decadent state, the flabbiness of public morals or the rancid lives of a certain class plays out differently in the Judge Dee series. Qiu Xialong is unabashedly critical of China's post Maoist government; au contraire, in the pre-Revolutionary world of Judge Dee, the magistrate/detective is an uncritical extension of the state. Indeed, van Gulik points out that the majority of the popular Chinese crime novels in pre-Revolutionary China were written by Confucian scholars; that, in turn, implies a cohesion with the Imperium. As Dee himself says, in The Haunted Monastery,
I prefer to keep to the practical wisdom of our Master Confucius, who teaches us our simple, everyday duties to our fellow-
men and to our society. And to requite good with good, and bad with justice!
At the end of that particular novel, the Judge also recommends that one of the characters, a young confused poet, now turn to the Confucian classics and take his examinations in Confucian literature. What is implicit here is a the maintenance of well-ordered society, culminating in the Emperor's rule, not the Augean repair of one small piece in a jigsaw already falling to pieces. When, in The Chinese Nail Murders, Dee orders a body to be exhumed to ascertain if the man had been poisoned, the judge is warned that, should he have ordered this mistakenly, he will be tried and punished by death. When no damning evidence is found when the body is dug up, Dee writes his resignation letter and is ready to send it off; but a change in the pursuit of justice subsequently vindicates him. In the example of erroneous exhumations, we must conclude that as Dee is an arm of the state, his error not only violated the religious principles of the dead person's family, but even worse, it would have brought shame upon the Emperor and the Emperor's regime. Hence, the severity of the sentence. It is not, as Detective Chen crosses the corrupt but powerful, an unexplained being kicked upstairs, an ostensible promotion that really removes him as a threat to a society already "bent."
In view of the traditional tales' "pronounced partiality to Confucianism," author van Gulik further informs us that he has replicated this bias in his Judge Dee novels. Indeed, the context which leads up to Dee's comment above, is the Judge's opinion on Taoism:
Taoism penetrates deep into the mysteries of life and death, but its abstruse knowledge may inspire that evil, inhuman pride
that turns a man into a cruel fiend. And its profound philosophy about balancing the male and the female elements may
degenerate into unspeakable rites with women. [This refers to the content of certain events in the novel.] The question is, Tan
Gan [one of his assistants,] whether we are meant to discover the mystery of life, and whether that discovery would make us
happier. Taoism has many elevated thoughts; it teaches us to requite good with good, and bad also with good. But the
instruction to requite bad with good belongs to a better age than we are living in now.... It's a dream of the future, a beautiful
dream—yet only a dream. I prefer....(etc.)
As as an exponent of this intensely pragmatic, perhaps slightly stodgy Confucianism, Dee also looks down upon Buddhists: their faith is referred to in The Haunted Monastery as a "Western import," though in this case "the West" is India. (In the Chinese Maze Murders, Dee makes a mild critique of the "workaholism" of Confucian officialdom, but he continues to adhere to that creed.) And what perhaps unintentionally evolves out of some rather cursory representations of Confucianism's two rival creeds, in van Gulik's hands, is an avoidance of one of the classic tropes of traditional Chinese tales: that which a waggish friend has dubbed "woo-woo." No matter the occasional stretch to account for various transgressions, no deus ex machina for you, Judge Dee. Indeed, the whole of Haunted Monastery rejects the notion of supernatural causation. Reason, following the clues, paying attention—these are what reveal the perpetrator(s) of the crime, not "woo-woo."
Pragmatism, to a large extent, rules even in "requiting the bad with justice." (In the epitome of pragmatism, "justice," please notice, is not ipso facto a synonym for "good.") While this may spoil The Haunted Monastery for some readers (I shan't ruin others,} I offer another example of the clear-cut rules which a magistrate must follow. Dee brings his assistants along, not only to help him proceed with his investigations, but also as, according to the state, the confession of a crime is only legitimate if there are, minimally, two witnesses. When in this novel, he finally identifies and confronts the perpetrator, his assistants are not with him. Face to face with the perp, Dee hears a full account but cannot make an arrest; and the crimes are fairly appalling: rape, three murders, an attempted few more, bribery—the list is long. However, Judge Dee accomplishes "justice" per osa, by bear: tricking the perpetrator and locking him into a small chamber with a very large, ill tempered bear. That in, and despite, our complicated and disheveled 21st century, would be considered vigilantism, law enforcement without legal authority. We are, I confess, shocked, although this act is evidently permissable under the code of Confucianism. But that act also adds to the three-dimensionality of the Judge: this is the first in the series where Dee gets cross, complains of a cold, of weariness and aches and pains, and, to say the least, shows that he has clay feet. The state, be reminded, does not.
And while the state and its Emperor are considered to be perfect and of necessity must remain unblemished by a bumbling servant, the world in which the crime takes place remains foul. Among other books, The Red Pavillion portrays an ambiance for prostitution and courtesanship which may jar the contemporary reader, despite the disapproval given the setting by Judge Dee. While historically interesting, it is not van Gulik's bes. And though in both contemporary and older crime novels, the dilemma is, yes, one of morality—what is right and what is wrong and how can the world torn apart by a crime (even the world of sexual slavery) be restored to balance?—an important difference is where the site of the corruption and decay is located. Contemporarily, Xialong locates it in the decadent elements of the current Chinese government. Van Gulik's novels, via Judge Dee, variously locate it in both Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, among the impoverished and avaricious, once among Korean businessmen (Korea, at that time, had been recently conquered by China and was under Chinese rule,) among persons bent upon personal revenge for a perceived wrong, in the demi-monde of crime and slease itself, and, more rarely, in the individual person of a corrupt official. It is never, never situated in the Imperial government itself.
It is, however, a credit to van Gulik that the niave reader is not misled into believing all sorts of nonsense about China and the Chinese through Western cartoon characters like Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu, both but the tip of the dectection iceberg in early 20th century Western-authored crime novels featuring rather racist depictions of Asian characters. As I mentioned, van Gulik was a Sinologist. He knew Mandarin. He was a diplomat who spent a significant amount of time observing traditional, pre-Revolutionary Chinese life. He knew his history and historical periods; and he admired the Chinese people. While at first some of the Dee novels might seem slightly flat, these books are enjoyably read as a portrait of detection with integrity and compassion, with flawed institutions and practices that we reject—slavery, the diminshed role of women, certain religious prejudices—but one whose history and accomplishments still deserve our respect. In reading them, dear reader, we all might learn something.
* In a recent February 2018, BBC Newsnight interview, regarding the intent of the present Chinese president to extend his term in office indefinitely, both Chinese interviewees (one working at London School of Economics, SOAS, and both experts,) referred to the HCC, using yet another term also employed by Xialong--as "princelings." It was rather interesting to already know what they were referring to.