Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
The anonymous call to the Fujian Police Bureau sent Sergeant Lou Xiangdong to the Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold karaoke center that serves as a sexual service locale for the corrupt officials and businessmen. There he is shocked by who he finds murdered, Fujian Special Squad Police Detective Hua Ting. Though he wants to believe that one of his mentors when he started was clean, Hua postulates whether the highly regarded dead cop was on the take?
Retired Comrade Secretary Zhao Yan of the Central party Chinese Discipline Committee assigns a major business corruption case to Shanghai Police Bureau Chief Inspector Chen Cao, explaining that the top gun Xing Xing already fled to the States. Comrade Zhao wants Xing's gang still flourishing at the cost of the country to be stopped. As Chen investigates, he ties the Hua homicide to the corruption scandal as the late sleuth had found ties between officials of the party and the self-exiled business mogul. Soon, Chen realizes he was selected not to solve the case, but because the party VIPs thought his reputation for honesty would give credibility to an investigation intended to fail.
In his fourth appearance (see WHEN RED IS BLACK and DEATH OF A RED HEROINE) Inspector Chen remains an honest, diligent and dedicated cop trying to insure justice is served while doing so under an oppressive government in which the truth is only what the Communist Party claims it to be. The story line is action-packed as Chen knows the so-called blank check Zhao gives him to weed out corruption at the highest levels of the government is a sham, but that does not stop him from following all the key threads to wherever they lead including America. THE CASE OF TWO CITIES is a superior police procedural.