This is number eleven in the Inspector Chen series. Set in China, the series revolves around Chen (imagine that!), who came of age during the Cultural Revolution and now works for the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau. This is the first book I’ve read in the series. That, I think, was a disadvantage. I felt like I missed some of the significance with references to previous cases, especially in the opening chapters. That’s not the author’s fault; I’m only making notes of it. For those interested in the series, it might be best to start with book one, Death of a Red Heroine.

It took me a very long time to get into the story’s rhythms. But once I did, the book grew on me. It definitely felt more literary in tone and focus than a typical mystery. The stories are a jumbled assortment of two kinds. First, there are memories inspired by Chen’s dreams. Second, there are fragments of seemingly unrelated stories about other people, all revolving around the community of Red Dust Lane. The stories often felt unresolved. After one particularly long story about Chen’s first unofficial case, the ending dissatisfied me. I wanted more resolution. It was difficult to piece together how all the stories related. (I suspect I might’ve done a better job with putting the pieces together if I’d read previous titles in this series.)

To me, this book read more like a collection of related stories with a tenuous continuous storyline than a “typical” novel. That is, you define “typical” as a white, Western-worldview novel with a three act structure and the hook-conflict-climax-resolution pattern that our well-meaning English teacher shoved down our throats in middle school. I’ve noticed that stories from non-Western cultures have a higher level of ambiguity and a higher tolerance for ambiguous endings. It must be a difference in cultural mindset. Neither is right or wrong. It’s simply a difference that exists.

The present-day storyline is Chen wrestling with whether or not to return to Red Dust Lane for another investigation even as his investigative career is slowly draining away. That case didn’t sound terribly interesting to me, at least from the description given here; however, I would read the next book to see how Qiu Xiaolong develops the case.

What was far more interesting is watching young Chen develop over the years. He goes from being a youth dogged by his family’s black status to a student obsessed with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, then to a frustrated police translator who strikes out on his own to investigate a case that isn’t his. Then he uses his newly-gained position to rectify old wrongs. He’s a sympathetic character in the flashback stories. I had a hard time sympathizing with his present-day self, who spends his night tossing and turning, musing on poetry and trying to make the decision and analyzing his dreams. I never cared for the dream sequences–eventually I skimmed them–and I expect that many mystery readers would, too. Literary readers might be more patient.

It was truly fascinating to read about the inner workings of the Party and see the adaptability of the people under the rigidity of Chairman Mao’s regime. The ordinary people wiggle and squirm their way around the Party rules, often (always) with collective (though unspoken) consent. When put under enough pressure, the people who survive are those who are both adaptable and creative. The residents of Red Dust Lane gather for their evening gossip under the guise of “political studies class,” always keeping a copy of Chairman Mao’s red book in hand as a prop.

Their ingenuity opens young Chen’s eyes. In this space, no one sees him as a “black puppy” (his nickname after the government brands his father as a black dissenter). For the first time, he has a vision beyond the confines of the dictatorship. From them, he learns how to become himself in a system determined to exploit him as a piece in a political game. For me, this is eye-opening and inspiring.

Ultimately, this is a book that has its fascinating aspects. Will it appeal to all mystery readers? No. Will it appeal to some? Yes. Do I recommend it? Absolutely, and I will be looking for more of Qiu Xiaolong’s work in the future.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

This review will appear on my blog on 15 March 2021.

Don't worry if you haven't read the earlier books in the unusual series- this is almost an origin story as Inspector Chen spends perhaps more time musing about his past than solving a current crime. It's clearly to easy to be a police officer in Shanghai. He has it tougher than many because of his family history, This latest case, involving a poem posted to social media, cuts close. It's an intriguing read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, I'm going to look for others in the series.

I was torn by "Becoming Inspector Chen" by Qiu Xiaolong. While it's beautifully written and a great insight into the poetry,philosophy and culture of China, as well as it's politics from the Cultural Revolution until the present day,it's also rather pedestrian with an investigation seemingly tacked on rather than being the focus of the book.

The plot-line is basically Chen musing on his past looking for insights into the "crime" of "liking" a subversive poem on social media. His memories range from when he was a boy through his whole career in the Shanghai police as he waits fearing his career is over.
Having never read an Inspector Chen novel before I don't know if this is the usual style, it's lyrical,cerebral and a book to be savoured rather than rushed through.

A great piece of writing, and a fascinating look at many aspects of China but it hardly lives up to it's "Mysteries and Thrillers" billing. If you're interested in China and want a book to saviour that's full of snippets of cultural references you'll enjoy it,if you're expecting "the great Chinese Detective story",it will probably disappoint.

Shanghai China. Chen Cao aka chief inspector Chen believes he has fallen out of favour in the Party and will lose his position with the police.
He recollects how he bacame inspector Chen. His father was blacklisted by the communist party as it embraced communism after the end of the second world war. This affected Chen. He used to join a group who were telling stories in red dust lane where they all lived. He also studied in the park near the Bund. Learning english and becoming a poet. He read western books including detective novels.
He was appointed to the police but only as a translator of American police procedures. He eventually persuaded his boss to let him help investigate the murder of an elderly rich resident of red dust lane.
This is only incidentally a detective story. It is a history of China since the late 1940s. Communism then Chairman Mao and the suffering of many good people. It is also a celebration of chinese cuisine. Also full of characters like Old Root and Mr and Mrs Ma.
This is the eleventh book to feature Chen. The author lives in America. He was studying when the tragedy at Tiananmen Square happened in 1989. He stayed in America and his wife joined him. An unusual book but enjoyable. I will read more inspector Chen books in the future.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a complicated book, I haven't read one like this that fully blends Chinese idioms and poetry, politics and food, culture and traditions, into a mystery book.

I read this book very slowly, not because it wasn't good, because there was so much to digest, so much tidbits to pickup. I was fascinated by the story of the culture revolution, the red Dust lane, as it coincided with stories my mom told me about her time as a child living in China during the same time period.

The book was fascinating, I bookmarked so much parts to discuss with my parents, such as the Internet Police patroling over the content of weTalk. The section about Pig Head changing the term limit of the constitution so the word Emperor became a highly censored word, Mr. Qiu, you're an intrepid author.

I've enjoyed the previous novels about the detective from Shanghai, and found this one quite different. Chen Cao was considered a "black puppy" since his father was denounced by the Red Guard. Part of the book is almost like a prequel to the series, discussing his experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution. Part of the book was devoted to a mystery which Chen the adult cop wants to help his superior solve, the murder of an old man who had just left a restaurant. I think I would have preferred this to be two different books, as I felt the stories didn't flow that well together. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The case in the ‘now’ revolves around an anti-Party poem; a poem that very much challenges the waters that Chen is carefully trying to navigate while working as an inspector in the police department of Shanghai. I liked the frequent quotes of poems. They were well placed and gave more meaning and flavor to the story.

Chen works at the mercy of the Party leaders and his investigations need to be concluded in the best interests of the Party. That is, the investigations he does in the other books in the Inspector Chen Cao series. Chen grew up during the Cultural Revolution that made his father repent for having lived the American bourgeois lifestyle. As a result, Chen became one of the Black Class. The first part of Becoming Inspector Chen reads like a biography infused with Chinese history lessons.

Because of the many time jumps in the narrative, it took me some time to get into the story. At first, it seemed like there was no connection between the chapters, almost as if you are reading anecdotes from someone’s life that provide a background and setting to the meager story in the now. Some chapters I liked very much, for example, those featuring Ling and Mr. Ma, and others were boring, especially when Chen was mostly an observer to conversations of others.

In the end, all storylines do come together. Becoming Inspector Chen is not so much about solving a crime, but more about the wellbeing of people living in Red Dust Lane. After this book, you’ll understand how Chen came to be the person he is now and why he handles his cases as he does. Here comes the crux: this is only interesting to those that love the Inspector Chen Cao series.

There is no suspense involved. Don’t start reading this book expecting a mystery novel. Even though there is some light crime-solving, the story is more about the effect that the political and social situation in China has on ordinary people’s lives. The writing style is quite laid-back and slow; a style that is familiar to readers of fiction from Asia. As a non-Chinese person, you can easily understand what is going on as many things are explained. I do wonder how much of this was added in the translation as I assume a Chinese reader wouldn’t enjoy the many explanations.

While I am not overly enthusiastic about Becoming Inspector Chen – partly because of the slow pace that is not quite contemplating nor hardcore crime-solving – I did like some of the chapters. I learned many things through the insights provided in the lives of those living on Red Dust Lane. In such a short novel Qiu Xiaolong manages to introduce a lively cast of characters.

This entry is an interesting one in the series - quite different from the other one I've read, but it feels as if it's meant to be not just the beginning of Chen's career, but a full accounting of his life that includes his introduction to the police and the end of his career.

I was in a distractable mood when I read the book, and sometimes found it difficult to keep track of where we were - in the present, the past, or even further back in the past. But I put the blame on me, not the author. What I liked about the book was the way we learned about the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution and the lingering feelings of shame it threw on the families who were targeted. Qiu implies that something as dramatic as the Cultural Revolution is happening now, with intense digital surveillance that can lead to disaster for anyone who doesn't fit the party's definition of good citizenship. In the meantime, Qiu recalls how he ended up as an inspector as he is being pushed out of the police force, with several small mysteries being investigated along the way, punctuated with poetry and longing for beauty. All of the stories bring Qiu back to the same street and the stories elders have told there for decades, continuity in a country that has gone through some epic events.

In the end I would rate this higher than a three because I keep thinking about the background to the investigations, but a bit less than a four for pacing and clarity (though that could be a fault of my reading mood).

I always love reaching for books set in China; I also do believe that Chinese authors need A LOT more recognition in the West than they're currently getting. Immediately, I thought Qiu Xiaolong's mystery sounded like just the book for me.

However, while it is a mystery, it's also highly political. I hated the ways the author criticized the regime to make the government a villain. Western news are already saturated with these messages and I was not into it one bit.

On the other hand, the imagery and symbolism were quite intriguing throughout the book, so I'm sure ambitious readers will enjoy this interesting blend of genres. The writing itself also worked well for me and kept me reading despite my concerns about the content.

*Thank you to the Publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have long liked the Inspector Chen series, even though the last one, Hold Your Breath, China, was not quite up to par. Of particular interest to me in the series has been the author's use of poetry - some ancient and some written for the books - and his exploration of various social and cultural issues of concern in China at the time of the writing: tainted food, pollution, corruption, life in the alleyways of Shanghai, etc. Becoming Inspector Chen takes us back to the start of Chen Cao's career as a police officer as he reflects on his current predicament that threatens to end his career as a senior police inspector. Although Chen continued to write and publish poetry and to do some translations of books from English into Chinese, activities for which he was educated and which he loved, throughout his years in the Shanghai Police Department, his ability to solve complex homicides has nourished not only his body -- he is an avid foodie - but his soul as well. Now he stands falsely accused and must find the real culprit himself. Regrettably, Becoming Inspector Chen does not include so many of the elements that lifted the series above so many others. Instead, this novel is bogged down by too many dreams, too many coincidences, a rather routine homicide, and too little exploration of other characters who seem to float in and out of focus as convenient props and pathways to solutions. While not without interest, Becoming Inspector Chen lacks the extra ingredients that separates the ordinary mystery novel from the extraordinary one. I look forward to the next entry in hopes that it meets the higher standards of the series than this one.

When Qiu Xiaolong’s first Inspector Chen book was released I was beside myself with excitement. It promised everything that a young man fascinated by China, prone to pretentiousness, and steeped in British TV crime dramas could possibly want! Crime mystery, set in China, loaded with Chinese poetry and philosophy – what a perfect book. But oh, what a shame. Not a full on disappointment, but I stuck with the Inspector Chen books up until <em>Red Mandarin Dress</em>, at which point I admitted defeat, enthusiasm sapped.

But Inspector Chen is back in <em>Becoming Inspector Chen</em>, the 11th book (12 if you count a short story collection), and having started this blog I promised myself I would not be discriminating in what I read – and besides, this has an intriguing premise, with a focus (as the title suggests) on Chen’s early years during the Cultural Revolution. I was interested again – it was time to return to Red Dust Lane.

Deep into the novel series now, Chen Cao is now Chief Inspector Chen but his post is precarious following his last case (presumably the previous novel, which I haven’t read). He is having bad dreams and reflecting on his early career, while dealing with a new case.

Morse has his opera, Holmes his pipe, Marlowe his liquor. Well Inspector Chen has his poetry. And then some. The most distinctive thing about the Inspector Chen books is that Chen is a poet, and the books are a rich stock of poetic and literary references. It didn’t long into <em>Becoming Inspector Chen</em> for me to be reminded that this was a reason why I gave up on the series, which felt deeply disappointing for a lover of Chinese literature. But these references come so thick and fast – there are few pages without at least one reference – that it starts to distract from the narrative, moves beyond an affectation and almost becomes self-parody.

I love Chinese poetry – the Tang poets were, along with <em>Hong Lou Meng</em>, the trigger for me falling in love with Chinese literature. And some of the allusions here work wonderfully and sent me right back to my bookshelves to find the original. But many of them feel gratuitous, a feeling not helped by the enormous and eclectic range of literary styles (from the <em>Classic of the Mountain and the Seas</em> to Xu Zhimo via Wang Yangming, not to mention Western works from TS Eliot to Martin Beck mysteries), some of the creaking ways they are introduced (‘<em>Time and tide wait for no woman, like in a half-forgotten Tang dynasty poem</em>’), and the fact that characters other than Chen also sometimes appear to think in poetic references. Qiu somehow doesn’t seem to engage deeply with many of them, just using them to support his descriptions or to indicate Chen’s thoughts. I think that fewer references more tightly woven into the narrative would be more effective and more satisfying to read.

It doesn’t help that Qiu has made two other stylistic choices that really grate with my personal preferences as a reader. Firstly, as well as his poetry Chen is a serious gourmand with a particular taste for unusual delicacies. In this book, at least, his tastes form part of a mystery (a corpse is found with both caviar and shark fin soup in his gut), but as a character trait it feels both superfluous (we already know he's cultivated) and alienating. Secondly, Qiu opens several of the chapters with dream sequences. I’m a firm believer that dream sequences have no place in novels: they’re cumbersome to read; they are so obviously artificial it takes you out of the story; they are about as tedious as, well, someone describing their dreams to you; and readers tend to skip them anyway (Elmore Leonard’s Rule no 10.) It’s no different here.

And a final reminder of why I gave up on the Chen series is the central mystery itself. You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned it yet. In all the Chen books I’ve read the crime plots often have a nice hook (here the corpse with a gourmet fusion in its stomach, who doesn't arrive until halfway through the book, as well as a single 'like' emoji posted next to a poem seeming to incriminate Chen politically) but the unravelling and solution tends to be talky and forgettable. Overall I can never quite shake the feeling that Qiu would rather be writing academic non-fiction, but he has a very good way with words and an agent who persuaded him that crime fiction is the most commercial part of the market. But the fact that Qiu is now 11 books into the series implies that he’s doing something right in that market.

I’m not entirely down on <em>Becoming Inspector Chen</em>. There are lots of enjoyable moments in reading it. Qiu’s ‘sights and smells’ of Shanghai and Beijing are vivid, and constructed far more effortlessly than the characters. Some of the descriptions of place and still images that he conjures are beautifully memorable. The most interesting parts of the book are the recollections of young Chen which, as the title implies, takes us to who Chen is now. The sequences set in the Cultural Revolution in particular are some of the best I've read in fiction. But I wanted to like it so much more than I did. Even in the flashbacks it can be self-indulgent (it’s hard to care about Chen’s student thesis about the tension TS Eliot’s impersonal theory and personal writing) and pretentious (Chen solves the mystery by repeatedly considering a leitmotif from The Unbearable Lightness of Being - in German, of course).

I admire that it is thoughtful, different and often beautiful, but I’m just disappointed that I found another Inspector Chen book just, well, a bit boring.

Thank you to Severn House and NetGalley for the ARC.

Becoming Inspector Chen turns out to have little to do with being an Inspector. I thought I was going to be reading a detective novel, but instead found a series of unrelated vignettes that were mostly uninteresting to me. I could only make it half-way through before losing complete interest in this novel.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Severn House Publishers for an advance copy of Becoming Inspector Chen, the eleventh novel to feature Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police.

After his last case Chen has fallen out of political favour and may be about to lose his job. On the eve of his interview with his boss he thinks back to key moments in his life and wonders if the memories can help him with the case of a subversive poet that no one, except his co-worker wants him near.

I enjoyed Becoming Inspector Chen, although it’s probably a bit intellectual for my more pedestrian mind. I’m not quite sure how to describe it as, personally, I wouldn’t class it as crime fiction despite finding it under that listing. It’s circular, always ending up in the same place, Red Dirt Lane and with the same characters appearing at different times, often offering an update on their circumstances. The novel offers a series of vignettes from Chen’s past, starting with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s up until the late 1980s when capitalism becomes acceptable. Reading the stories there is a certain irony in this volte-face and it doesn’t go unremarked in the personal histories depicted. The present day story of the subversive poem is negligible in the overall storyline but reinforces the knowledge that censorship is alive and well in modern day China and that some things never change.

There is some crime in the novel but it’s more a history of how a repressive regime affected ordinary citizens. Some of it is really horrible but, at the same time, I was fascinated and found it compulsive reading. I didn’t really get the imagery in either Chen’s dreams, philosophising or the poetry that pervade the novel, probably because I’m too lazy to work it out, but I was glued to the pages about everyday life and the unfolding dramas. It comes to a rather abrupt and vague ending, but perhaps that is the point, nothing is sure in life.

Becoming Inspector Chen is a good read that I can recommend.