In 'The Haunted Monastery', Judge Dee and his wives seek refuge from a violent mountain storm and are plunged into a bizarre series of interrelated crimes. Three women have been murdered in the monastery; Dee has seen something impossible, perhaps supernatural, and inexplicable events flash forth in the dark tangle of corridors and the Taoist Hell - a hall filled with statuary showing realistically the torments of Hell.
Han-Yuan, China, AD 666. A lakeside town near the Imperial Capital. T'ang China's master detective, Judge Dee, finds his astounding powers of deduction put to their greatest challenge yet as he battles murder -- and high treason against the Throne.
Pen-Lai District, North East China, AD 663. Newly arrived from the Imperial Capital to take up his first post as Magistrate, Judge Dee is at once confronted with three eerie and baffling mysteries which test his analytical and deductive powers to the limit, drawing him along a trail of blood leading to a criminal of boundless ambition -- and to a plot which will rock the vast bureaucracy of the mighty T'ang Empire!
Early in his career, Judge Dee visits a senior magistrate who shows him a beautiful lacquer screen on which a scene of lovers has been mysteriously altered to show the man stabbing his lover. The magistrate fears he is losing his mind and will murder his own wife. Meanwhile, a banker has inexplicably killed himself, and a lovely lady has allowed Dee's lieutenant, Chiao Tai, to believe she is a courtesan. Dee and Chiao Tai go incognito among a gang of robbers to solve this mystery, and find the leader of the robbers is more honorable than the magistrate. "One of the most satisfyingly devious of the Judge Dee novels, with unusual historical richness in its portrayal of the China of the T'ang dynasty."---New York Times Book Review "Even Judge Dee is baffled by Robert van Gulik's new mysteries in The Lacquer Screen. Disguised as a petty crook, he spends a couple of precarious days in the headquarters of the underworld, hobnobbing with the robber king. Dee's lively thieving friends furnish some vital clues to this strange and fascinating jigsaw."---The Spectator "So scrupulously in the classic Chinese manner yet so nicely equipped with everything to satisfy the modern reader."---New York Times Robert Van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. He drew his plots from the whole body of Chinese literature, especially from the popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century.
The last of the Judge Dee series. Judge Dee is a 7th century magistrate/detective who always has three crimes to solve. In the first, a headless body is found; in the second, a poisoning occurs; and finally a cotton-maker is killed.
Seven foul crimes; seven cunning murderers brought to justice by the master-detective of China's glorious T'ang Empire. (And one innocent person exonerated). 'A rich new vein of detective fiction is worked by Mr van Gulik . . . Entertaining, instructive and impressive'.
The eight short stories in Judge Dee at Work cover a decade during which the judge served in four different provinces of the T'ang Empire. From the suspected treason of a general in the Chinese army to the murder of a lonely poet in his garden pavilion, the cases here are among the most memorable in the Judge Dee series.
It all begins on the night of the Poo-yang dragonboat races in 699 A.D.: a drummer in the leading boat collapses, and the body of a beautiful young woman turns up in a deserted country mansion. There, Judge Dee—tribunal magistrate, inquisitor, and public avenger—steps in to investigate the murders and return order to the Tang Dynasty. In The Emperor’s Pearl, the judge discovers that these two deaths are connected by an ancient tragedy involving a near-legendary treasure stolen from the Imperial Harem one hundred years earlier. The terrifying figure of the White Lady, a river goddess enshrined on a bloodstained altar, looms in the background of the investigation. Clues are few and elusive, but under the expert hand of Robert van Gulik, this mythic jigsaw puzzle assembles itself into a taut mystery. “If you have not yet discovered Judge Dee and his faithful Sgt. Hoong, I envy you that initial pleasure which comes from the discovery of a great detective story. For the magistrate of Poo-yang belongs in that select group of fictional detectives headed by the renowned Sherlock Holmes.”—Robert Kirsch, Los AngelesTimes “The title of this book and the book itself have much in common. Each is a jewel, a rare and precious find.”—AtlantaTimes
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