Our thanks to MPL librarian Sally Michalski for today's Staff Recommendation!
As I was looking through the mystery paperbacks in our collection, I stumbled across several white-bound books by author Robert Van Gulik, with intriguing titles like The Willow Pattern and The Chinese Bell Murders. I felt as if I had stepped back to a time when I was hooked on the Fu Manchu mysteries of Sax Rohmer, or even to the Green Ginger Jar of my childhood.
No one had taken these books out in ages, so I took home The Willow Pattern: A Judge Dee Mystery to try for myself. Here I was introduced to the Chinese detective Judge Dee. The mystery was pretty typical of a present-day murder mystery -- but the setting was China during the Tang Dynasty of the 7th century.
In reading Van Gulik's series, it's hard not to picture a modern-day setting. The culture of the Tang dynasty was sophisticated, and the acts of murder were for much the same reason that people murder today. There are even descriptions of martial arts fights between two people, described just as you would see them in the movies today.
My first impulse while reading the book was to find out more about the author of these Judge Dee mysteries. Robert Van Gulik was born in Holland, but was raised in Jakarta, where he learned to speak Mandarin as well as other languages. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1935 from the University of Leyden, and went on to join the Dutch Foreign Service, where he was primarily stationed in East Asia. As a diplomat, he was in Tokyo when Japan declared war on the Netherlands, and he worked with Chiang Kai-shek’s government in China. He married a Chinese woman and had four children. At the time of his death, he was the Dutch Ambassador to Japan.
Judge Dee -- who was a real person, living during the Tang Dynasty -- was well-known long before the fictional Sherlock Holmes came upon the scene with his powers of deduction. As part of the governing system, Judge Dee served as a magistrate, hearing criminal and civil cases and distributing justice in the best interest of the people. His reputation for fairness and his powers of deduction are what propelled him into modern-day literature.
Van Gulik’s original literary connection with Judge Dee was in a book called Dee Goong An. This is a volume that was written in the 18th century, but was eventually translated by Van Gulik. In this book, Judge Dee is involved in three murders at the same time, which is typical of the Chinese Detective novel as it has developed over the centuries.
There are elements in Dee Goong An that are not present in the Judge Dee series that Van Gulik wrote himself. One such element is fulfilling the audience's expectations for detective novels and revealing how the criminal is going to be punished, with all the gory details of the punishment vividly described. (Torture is also meted out in the magistrate’s courtroom; one apparently-favored method of getting someone to confess was through the use of screws on the wrists and ankles.)
Another modern-day author, Eleanor Cooney, has also written about Judge Dee. In Cooney's thick novel Deception, Judge Dee is swept up into the intrigue surrounding a royal concubine who will go on to become the Empress Wu. There are magical elements involving a sorcerer, visits to Buddhist monasteries, and nights of meditation in Buddhists chapels. (Divine inspiration is given to Judge Dee regarding the crime after such a night.) There's even a peek into Judge Dee’s private life.
Dee has been immortalized in recent movies. In the tradition of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this ancient sleuth has been showcased with fantastic action and brilliant scenery. From the 2010 film Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, men are experiencing spontaneous combustion as they work on one of the Empress Wu’s building projects. Of course, there are battles in the tradition of the fantastical, where warring parties seemed to be imbued with supernatural strength and physical prowess.
A new Inspector Dee movie was released in September 2013 -- Young Inspector Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon.
Inspector Dee, Judge Dee, Detective Dee; they are all the same immortalized person. If you are looking for a good mystery that is not set in England and does not include spies or terrorists, try a Judge Dee mystery by Robert Van Gulik. You will find Dee’s powers of deduction to rival those of Sherlock Holmes, as you read your way through murders by poison, knifing, arrows, or magic!
From the Catalog:
-- The Judge Dee mysteries - by Robert Van Gulik.
-- Dee Goong An - translated by Robert Van Gulik.
-- Deception - by Eleanor Cooney.
-- Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame [DVD]
Bibliography
- Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An): An Authentic Eighteenth-Century Chinese Detective Novel. New York : Dover Publications, 1976.
- Cooney, Eleanor and Altieri Daniel : Deception: A Novel of Murder and Madness in Tang China. New York : W. Morrow, c1993.
- Gulik, Robert Van: The Willow Pattern: A Judge Dee Mystery. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1993.
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