Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee

"Although this historical mystery is a thoroughly Chinese work of detective fiction , it is a great read for people coming from the Western tradition. The detective uses his formidable powers of deduction based on logical thinking and psychological insight, and there are some suspenseful situations during the course of the investigation. Judge Dee himself goes about incognito, and readers also follow the actions of his lieutenants — reformed former highway robbers and conmen — who take part in the investigations in various ways. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee was written by an anonymous author in the 17th or 18th century but it is set many centuries earlier, in the Tang dynasty. The detective is based on Di Renjie (630-700), who is known to have solved many puzzling cases in real life. In this fictionalised novel, he is magistrate in a district of Shandong province, meaning that he was the detective, prosecutor and judge for the district town and surrounding areas. It was the norm to work on several cases simultaneously, and in this book he solves three different cases. Robert van Gulik, the translator, went on to write 16 Judge Dee mysteries himself (published 1958-1968) which are also well worth reading."