Red Mandarin Dress

I have been a fan of Qiu Xialong since the publication of his first book, Death of a Red Heroine. I faithfully read each of his books since then. His first books were very detailed in description, so much so that reading a paragraph would make me imagine the surroundings he was describing, the smell of the flowers or the flavor of the food. The main character of all his books, Inspector Chen Cao was very well drawn in the earlier books, and the political and emotional dilemmas he faced were thought-provoking.

Unfortunately, with each book Inspector Chen is losing most of the depth in his character and turning into Inspector AnyDetective. Each book has become progressively more Western; maybe it is the author's way of describing the increasing westernization of Chinese society, but his more recent books lost the distinctive writing that made Qiu Xiaolong's books stand out among other run-of the mill detective stories.

I especially did not like Inspector Chen's crime scene reconstructions, which remind me of the end of the Alfred Hitchcock film "Psycho". It's very annoying to have an inspector turn into a psychologist.