UBC: French, Midnight in Peking

[truepenny]

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is an excellent book, about the murder of a young Englishwoman in Peking in 1937, and the failure of the official investigation, caught between the rock of Chinese corruption and the hard place of British determination to squelch all scandal, and then about the quite remarkable investigation conducted by the young woman's father (then in his seventies) and the solution he discovered. It makes an interesting pair with People Who Eat Darkness: both are stories about the very strange worlds of expatriate Anglo society in Asian countries and about living along the interface between two radically different cultures, about foreignness (both being somewhere foreign and being foreign) and about falling through the cracks.

Also about what happens to young women who cross the paths of men who think they have the inalienable right to take whatever they want.



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