THE CHINESE NAIL MURDERS. A Judge Dee Mystery.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Paperback. Light shelfwear. Very good.
Item #47232
ISBN: 0226848639
209pp. With illustrations in period style by the author, map and textual notes. Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and authority on Chinese history and culture, drew the plots from his stories from the body of Chinese literature, especially from popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century. Each Judge Dee mystery features three original Chinese plots, rewritten to form one continuous story, featuring master detective Judge Dee, one of the most famous master detectives who lived in the T'ang Dynasty of the seventh century A.D. In THE CHINESE NAIL MURDERS, the Chinese Sherlock Holmes and his hour helpers solve the murders of an honored merchant, a kindly boxing master, and a paper merchant's wife, whose corpse has no head. The case of the headless corpse is based on a 13th-century Chinese casebook; the nail murder, one of the most famous motifs in Chinese crime literature, is first described in the same text.
Price: $5.50