Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death

Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann

Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese American detective based in Honolulu created by author Earl Derr Biggers, who wrote six novels featuring Chan between 1925 and 1932. Biggers loosely based Chan on Honolulu detective Chang Apana. The character was adopted by Hollywood which produced over 3 dozen Charlie Chan movies from 1926 through the 1940s. In the 1970s Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine came into existence to publish the Charlie Chan stories of Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann who were writing them under the pseudonym Robert Hart Davis. This is one of the longer stories from issue #4 of this publication, issues in August 1974, and now available on its own in print since 2002.
In this story Charlie Chan is on vacation and visiting the Transcontinental Chess Tournament in Paris as the guest of his friend Paris police Prefect Claude DeBevre. The tournament is pitting the British chess champion Roger Mountbatten against a young American challenger Grant Powell. Tensions are high between the two opponents and their respective backers Clive Kettridge and Raymond Balfour, as they all settle into the same floor of the Hotel Frontenac. When Balfour is found murdered in his bed in a room locked from the inside, Debevre asks for Chan's help in solving the mystery before the tournament is ruined.
I don't recommend this book to anyone except hard core fans of Charlie Chan. If you are interested in the famous detective, I recommend starting with one of Biggers' six novels. This is typical mystery magazine fare, light detective fiction written to amuse, and in that it succeeds. The authors of this story rely on the reader having a familiarity with the character and do minimal character development in the text.

The Third Round

The Third Round by H. C. McNeile

Originally published in 1924, this is the third of ten novels about the character Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond that were written by H. C. McNeile under the Pseudonym of Sapper. It is also the third of four of these novels that features his arch enemy Carl Peterson. The others being Bulldog Drummond (1920), The Black Gang (1922), and The Final Count (1926). While the characters make reference to their earlier encounters, there is no need to have read the previous two novels to enjoy or understand this one. After serving in World War I Bulldog Drummond finds that as a demobilised officer he finds peace incredibly tedious and would welcome diversion, as long as it is exciting.
In The Third Round the excitement starts when his wartime buddy Algernon Longworth comes to see Drummond because he is worried about his future father-in-law Professor Goodman, a chemist who has discovered an inexpensive method to make large diamonds that are indistinguishable from the mined gems. When the head of the international diamond syndicate hears about the discovery and that Dr. Goodman plans to present his findings to the Royal Society at their next meeting, he offers Goodman a quarter million pounds to suppress the information, which Goodman refuses to do. Hearing this, Drummond begins to worry for the Professor's life as the information could disrupt the entire diamond industry and fortunes would be lost. When the diamond syndicate fails to persuade Goodman, they agree to pay Peterson a half million pounds to prevent Goodman from making his discovery public. Peterson agrees to help, but sees the secret formula as something he could turn into a multi-million pound fortune if he possessed it. The excitement that Drummond needs is present throughout the rest of the story.
H. C. McNeile was a Captain in the Royal engineers or, as they were commonly known, The Sappers, who were combat engineers working on the front lines during World Was I. During the was he wrote war-themed stories under the pseudonym Sapper. After the was ended this once "unremittingly hearty man" suffered from delicate health, having been gassed and hospitalized several times during his 32 months on the front lines in France. He died at the age of 49 from terminal throat or lung cancer that could be traced back to his wartime service and the gas attacks he endured.
McNeile's Drummond is an Englishman that is typified by a "flamboyantly aggressive patriotism" towards England which is characterized by an opposition to those who challenge its stability or morality. Even his nickname, Bulldog, is symbolic of England. His English gentlemen friends, which McNeile calls "the Breed", fight a conspiracy of foreigners threatening England's stability. Most of the foreigners in the Bulldog Drummond series are villains or morally weak. While McNeile was very popular while he was alive and considered just an upstanding Tory who was proud of his country, after World War II critics start seeing signs of fascism in his writings as well as heavy handed xenophobia and anti-Semitism. In this novel this weak moral character is most obvious in the German chemist Professor Scheidstrun and his wife, who are bent to the will of Carl Peterson.

When Red is Black

When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong

When Red is Black uses the story of a murdered author of a book banned by the Communist government over 10 years earlier to describe the delicate balance and shifting forces in a Shanghai torn between its Maoist past and its commercialized future. In a city where state-run businesses find themselves having to compete with new Capitalist enterprises, and loyal Communist workers see their security and privilege stripped away by the new changes, the citizens must learn to balance their proletariat past with their open market future in the midst of rapid change.
The Red of the title refers to the state-approved behavior which in the past was tied to Communist social and economic goals. In the days of Mao, property owners and businessmen were considered Black and sent to re-education camps to learn communist values from the peasants in the fields and Red Guard educators. But in the new Shanghai, it is the businessmen who are reaping benefits of increased income and buying power, while the working class is stuck in low paying jobs in state-run industries and they cannot get the benefits of housing, retirement, and health care. Those who were once Red find they have become Black.
Inspector Chen is very adept at navigating between these different worlds and is a rising star of the Shanghai Police Bureau. However, he is taking a vacation to work for a new commercial development when Yin Lige, the author of a banned book, is found murdered in her Shanghai apartment. So his assistant detective Yu Guangming is given the case to solve but, because of the political nature of the case, he feels great pressure from Chief Inspector Chen Cao to find the killer quickly.
The story is rich in details and shows the many facets of modern Shanghai life. The police procedure almost takes a back seat to the city life of its people as we learn about housing problems, cuisine, Shanghai history, and many other aspects of modern Chinese life.