Thief of Souls by Brian Klingborg

From the first sentence, I was hooked. A woman's corpse, 'hollowed out like a birchbark canoe' is discovered. Meanwhile, Inspector Lu Fei of the Public Security Bureau is alone in a bar planning to 'get gloriously drunk' on warm wine, the sound of traditional Chinese fiddle music playing in the background. Lu is smitten with the barkeep, Yanyan, a beautiful widow. Then his cell phone rings; its his night off but the unthinkable has happened in his rural, backwater township: a woman has been murdered, and her organs removed.

I will admit, when I was offered Thief of Souls, I downloaded it to look at, never suspecting I would devour it in 24 hours. The mystery is good with red herrings and a deranged murderer and interdepartmental conflicts. There are chilling scenes, and threatening scenes, and emotional scenes, and a hearty dash of wit and humor. 

But what charmed me was the location and the characters.

Lu quotes Master Kong--Confucius to us--revealing his traditional, unmodern, unCommunist values. Lu believes in love before marriage, filial piety, and most brazenly of all, he believes in justice, not convenient arrests and forced convictions. It gets him into trouble with his superiors, this insisting on finding the woman's killer when they already have a man in custody. 

As Lu follows the trail into Harbin city, he unveils corruption, is pursued by thugs, kills a man in self defense, and unearths the underground gay culture.  

Klingborg does an excellent job of succinctly explaining how Chinese police, law, and government work and readers learn about the lives of rural and city Chinese people. Central to the story are traditional Chinese beliefs about death. 

Stability takes precedence over public safety, we read, involving the suppression of information, quick, although not always accurate solving of crimes, and fiddling with the statistics. And of course, deniability is par for the course: "Our justice system doesn't wrongly convict innocent people."

I look forward to reading another Inspector Lu Fei mystery.

I was given a free galley by the publisher through Net Galley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Thief of Souls: An Inspector Lu Fei Mystery
by Brian Klingborg
St. Martin's Press/ Minotaur Books
Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date May 4, 2021   
ISBN: 9781250779052
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

In Brian Klingborg's Thief of Souls, the brutal murder of a young woman in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing—but seemingly only Inspector Lu Fei, living in exile in the small town, is interested in justice for the victim.

Lu Fei is a graduate of China’s top police college but he’s been assigned to a sleepy backwater town in northern China, where almost nothing happens and the theft of a few chickens represents a major crime wave. That is until a young woman is found dead, her organs removed, and joss paper stuffed in her mouth. The CID in Beijing—headed by a rising political star—is on the case but in an increasingly authoritarian China, prosperity and political stability are far more important than solving the murder of an insignificant village girl. As such, the CID head is interested in pinning the crime on the first available suspect rather than wading into uncomfortable truths, leaving Lu Fei on his own.

As Lu digs deeper into the gruesome murder, he finds himself facing old enemies and creating new ones in the form of local Communist Party bosses and corrupt business interests. Despite these rising obstacles, Lu remains determined to find the real killer, especially after he links the murder to other unsolved homicides. But the closer he gets to the heart of the mystery, the more he puts himself and his loved ones in danger.

Land of Big Numbers: Stories by Te-Ping Chen

Te-Ping Chen's debut story collection Land of Big Numbers started out strong and ended with a mind-blowing parable that knocked my socks off. 

I read the first story through BookishFirst and put in my name for the ARC. Set in China, twins go on separate life paths, the bright and driven girl challenging government repression, the boy excelling in competitive video gaming. A reversal of expectations challenges our values.

The stories are revelatory about life in modern China and the expat experience. I was unsettled by the portrait of life in China, seemingly normal people doing seemingly normal things, and yet so much at odds with American expectations. 

The generational divide shows up clearly. The older characters had lived hard lives of manual labor and poverty. Some hold onto fantasies of achievement and acceptance into the Party. Their children become teenage factory workers in the city or hope for a rich benefactor or play the stock market dreaming of easy money.

It is a world at once very familiar--and very alien. The details are different, but the human experience universal.

All around Zhu Feng, it seemed, people were buying, buying, homes and stocks and second and third houses; there was a whole generation who'd gotten rich and needed to buy things for their kids, and the same dinky things from before didn't pass muster: penny rides on those plastic cartoon figures that flashed lights and gently rocked back and forth outside of drugstores; hawthorn impaled on sticks and sheathed in frozen yellow sugar casings, a cheap winter treat. They needed to buy because they had the money and that's what everyone else was doing...Also, the government said it was the buying opportunity of a generations...China was going up and up and nobody wanted to be left behind."~from Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

The last story Guebeikou Spirit is amazing, a parable that reaches past it's setting to alert against the lure of complacence that can become complicity. Characters are stranded on a new high-speed train station after trains pass them buy. Regulations state that passengers must depart from a different station than they entered, and so they remain.

Every day they hear the announcement that the train is delayed. The guards reassuring,"we'll get there together," as they bring in food, blankets, personal health supplies, and as weeks go on, televisions and coloring books. 

The stranded people become a media sensation and the organize to represent 'Gubeikuo Spirit.' Several dissident young men try to follow the train tracks to another station, but always return and finally give up. The outside world's hardships come through the television news. They become comfortable so that when a train finally stops, they are unwilling to leave.

Obedience to an illogical rule, becoming comfortable, leading to the loss of volition and self-determination--it's a powerful message. 

Te-Ping Chen is a marvelous writer and I look forward to reading more from her pen.

I received an ARC from the publisher through BookishFirst and an egalley through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Land of Big Numbers: Stories
by Te-Ping Chen
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books
Pub Date: February 2, 2021
ISBN: 9780358272557
softcover $15.99 (USD)

eBook $9.99

ISBN-13/EAN: 9780358275039

ISBN-10: 0358275032

from the publisher

A debut collection from an emerging “fiction powerhouse,” vivid portrayals of the men and women of modern China and its diaspora that “entertain, educate, and universally resonate” (Booklist, starred review).

Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present.

 Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.

With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.

About the author

TE-PING CHEN's fiction has been published in, or is forthcoming from, The New Yorker, Granta, Guernica, Tin House, and The Atlantic. A reporter with the Wall Street Journal, she was previously a correspondent for the paper in Beijing and Hong Kong. Prior to joining the Journal in 2012, she spent a year in China as a Fulbright fellow. She lives in Philadelphia. 

A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China,1949 by Kevin Peraino

In 1949 Mao's People Liberation Army was taking over mainland China while Madame Chaing Ka-shek endeavored to gain more funding for her husband's Nationalist army.

America considered China a minor power. Europe after WWII garnered most of American attention. President Truman was assailed with conflicting views on how to deal with China. There was the domino theory and its fear of Communist take-over of Southeast Asia. For all the help that Chaing Ka-shek had received, the Nationalists were losing the war. Was their cause a 'rate hole' not worth throwing more money into? Britain was considering recognizing Mao as the new head of China. Should America follow suit?

Kevin Peraino's narrative history A Force So Swift was fascinating to read. The complicated history of the time comes to life, especially the machinations of Truman's White House and the people who sought to influence his policy. Names I heard growing up were brought to life. After reading The Accidental President by A. J. Baimie about Truman's first four months in the presidency it was interesting to see how he handled issues in his second term.

"......Truman and his N.S.C. filtered into the Cabinet Room at the White House....From an oil painting at the front of the room, the face of Woodrow Wilson stared down, judging them. For his entire adult life, Truman had sought to emulate Wilson, to continue the twenty-eighth president's quest to develop a "collective conscience" and a "common will of mankind" that might replace the chaos of conflicting interests that had defined the first half of the twentieth century."

Instead of consolidating a way to universal peace, Truman signed the policy paper to halt support to "non-Communist elements in China." America would no longer support Chaing Ka-shek, now isolated on Taiwan. Money would instead go to covert operations. America was to give "particular attention" to the French and Vietnamese conflict in Indochina. Meanwhile, Mao was celebrating his victory and had turned his attention to Korea. The choices made in 1949 led to the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War and have implications that reverberate to this day.

I received a free book from the publisher through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Drawing on Chinese and Russian sources, as well as recently declassified CIA documents, Kevin Peraino tells the story of this remarkable year through the eyes of the key players, including Mao Zedong, President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, Minnesota congressman Walter Judd, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the influential first lady of the Republic of China. from the publisher

For the Glory: Eric Liddell's Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr

I was barely into my twenties when I met Dr. Maybell Marion Holmes. She had been born to missionaries in China and later returned to China as a missionary. Her parents fled China during the Boxer Rebellion. Her father Rev. Thomas D. Holmes wrote a book, China Stories, about his experiences. Marion lived into her nineties. I only knew her for a few years before my husband's work brought a move.

While reading Duncan Hamilton's biography on Eric Liddell For the Glory I chastised myself for not having probed Dr. Holmes for stories. She had first hand experience of events of which I was totally ignorant. To think of what I could have learned!

The Chinese resented how the Western was influencing their country. Comprised mainly of peasants, the Boxers rebelled by destroying railroads, killing missionaries, and attacking foreign enclaves and diplomats. President McKinley joined Europeans in sending in troops. The Manchu Dynasty joined with the Boxers. It was the beginning of the Chinese Revolution.

Eric Liddell's parents were missionaries in China during the Boxer Rebellion until his father suffered a stroke. Eric idolized his father. "Be ye perfect" became Eric's goal, an example set by his father's embodiment of the ideals taught by Jesus.


Most people know Eric Liddell only from the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire which follows his career as a runner in the 1924 Paris Olympics.  The movie portrays Eric as a high minded idealist, adamant about keeping the Sabbath; he will not race on Sunday. A friend exchanges races; Eric runs feeling God's pleasure and wins a medal. The movie ends with a few lines about Eric becoming a missionary and dying in China.

1925 Liddell as painted by Eileen Soper http://www.weihsien-paintings.org/NormanCliff/people/individuals/Eric01/p_painting.htm

The story behind Eric's Olympic win is set forth in the first part of Hamilton's book, and he brings Liddell's personality and gifts to life. He comments on ways the movie altered truth for the sake of story.

But it is Eric's life after winning the gold that becomes most riveting, especially the last third of the book about his missionary career in China while under Japanese occupation during WWII. The author is certain he is writing about a saint, and makes us believe too.

Liddell returning to Japanese occupied China as a missionary

The man in these pages has the mind of a winner, the determination and drive to push himself beyond endurance. It is a trait he takes into all his life.

Eric was sent to an isolated village mission which fell under Japanese occupation. After a vacation break the mission society sent Eric back to the mission. It was a fateful decision. The missionaries were put under house arrest then rounded up and sent to a concentration camp in a run down former mission school. In over crowded, unsanitary, and claustrophobic conditions, the internees struggled to deal with the waste and developed a Black Market to supplement their scanty food supplies.

Eric kept up a public face of encouragement while teaching in the camp school, but also hauling water, cleaning excrement, offering non-judgmental counseling, and organizing sports events and races. His health steadily declined, and he died in the camp, emaciated and weak, after suffering several strokes. He had brain cancer.

For the Glory is a wonderful biography, inspiring and glorious, horrifying and sad. But beyond the sadness there is hope. Liddell's example of loving your enemies inspired a camp internee, Steve Metcalf, to become a missionary to Japan. Metcalf called it 'passing the baton of forgiveness.' To have witnessed the atrocities the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese, and yet forgiven them, came out of their deep faith and obedience to the teaching of Jesus.

Eric's daughter, whom he never saw, grew up resentful until she realized her father was meant to be in that camp, touching the lives of many, part of a bigger plan. She realized her family was meant to share him.

Eric's favorite hymn was Be Still My Soul, translated by a fellow Scott. Did he know these words would be needed to comfort him during his earthly trial?

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav'nly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still now
His voice Who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,
And all is darkened in the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou better know His love, his heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His own fullness all he takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hast'ning on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change are tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise
On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high;
Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways,
So shall he view thee with a well-pleased eye.
Be still, my soul: the Sun of life divine
Through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.

http://www.hymnary.org/text/be_still_my_soul_the_lord_is_on_thy_side

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

For the Glory
by Duncan Hamilton
Penguin
Publication May 10, 2016
$27.95 hard cover
ISBN: 978159420627