⇒ PDF Gratis Midnight in Peking The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China Paul French 9780670921072 Books

Midnight in Peking The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China Paul French 9780670921072 Books

Download As PDF : Midnight in Peking The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China Paul French 9780670921072 Books

Midnight in Peking The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China Paul French 9780670921072 Books

This book was recently released to a lot of rave reviews. I read one such review in my local newspaper, so I put this book on reserve at the library. I'm glad I didn't buy it. I'd expected the "compulsively readable" true crime book described by reviewers.

This one wasn't compulsively readable. I had to pick it up several times and ended up flipping to the final chapters to find out what really happened. The prose isn't awful, but it wasn't compelling either.

A serious and constantly irritating aspect of this book, was the lack of a readable map, although the opening chapters describing the crime and the Peking of that era, constantly harped on specific locations. The only "map" is a highly stylized artist's drawing of - apparently - 1930's Peking, located as endpapers in the front and back of the book. This "map" is floridly colored, whimsically illustrated, full of difficult-to-read print, and apparently doesn't show such important locations as the oft-named street where the victim lived. Or anyway, if that information was there, I failed to locate it after several careful inspections.

I assume the author was correct in describing the events, and I thought the explanation he offered at the end was believable. The most interesting part of the book was the description of where the main players in the story, ended up during and after the Japanese invasion. I found it notable that Pamela Werner's father, old and iconoclastic, survived the hardships of a Japanese internment camp unbroken while younger people perished or emerged as wrecks.

As a crime story, it was a brutal tawdry tale. What happened to the victim was horrible, and shouldn't have been done, and the killers deserved to be caught and punished although they weren't. However, the world soon became ensnarled in warfare that brought such widespread horror and destruction, that it's almost a surprise that anyone resurrected this story at all.


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Midnight in Peking The Murder That Haunted the Last Days of Old China Paul French 9780670921072 Books Reviews

MIDNIGHT IN PEKING is one of the best true crime book that I’ve ever read. The author PAUL FRENCH did an admirable job of weaving together the facts of a 1937 unsolved brutal murder of an English girl Pamela Werner in Peking. The author kept me engaged throughout the book with a writing style that reminded me of something JOSEPH WAMBAUGH or MICHAEL CONNELLY would have written.

Pre-World War 2 China is an unusual setting for a true crime book. The book gives an interesting insight into a country in turmoil with Chiang Kai-shek vs. Mao Zedong; the growing influence and dominance of the Japanese military in China; the territorial enclaves of western countries; the lives of expatriates like the White Russians; Chinese nationalism; Chinese superstitions, etc.

After finishing a book, I ask myself if I would re-read it again in 20+ years. If the book is one that I would re-read in 20+ years, I give it 5-stars. I gave MIDNIGHT IN PEKING 5-stars.
As one who has a penchant for travel writing, and in particular the writing of Western expats in China, and who has lived in and taught in Chinese universities and key senior middle schools over much of the past quarter century, especially in Beijing, I gravitated toward this novel the moment I saw it online. I wasn't disappointed in my choice. French manages to write with a superb sense of suspense although he retains journalistic integrity by having done his homework very well indeed. He has rummaged through archives in London and autopsy files in Beijing, and read every bit of correspondence published on this sensational case submerged only because of impending war with Japan and diplomatic intrigue. The book, simply put, was a page turner for me. I read it in two nights but only because I needed some shut-eye. I had heard mention of the case on which this historical work (reminiscent of Capote's "In Cold Blood") centers many years ago and had always wondered what really happened. French comes as close as any private eye work his salt to finding out who was in the rogue's gallery. Although there is now a website devoted to calling into question his version of events--or at least his interpretation of the evidence--I found nothing on it that compelled me to look askance at French's take.

What I found most worthy in this book is the way French makes the reader feel like he knows the Badlands and the Legation district in pre-war Beijing, and how he draws us in to the savage and tragic murder of a British teenager and enables us to identify with her father's plight in trying to keep her case from going cold. The author creates a sense of immediacy as if the murder occurred only recently, provides us with insight into the machinations of diplomats and detectives alike, and above all makes us feel with utter poignancy the loss of an innocent person nearly lost to history. Rarely have I read a work so firmly set in history which has caused me to care about someone so distant in time if not space.

Whether you have visited Beijing or have any knowledge of China in the early twentieth century, you will find this work well worth reading if for no other reason than the masterful manner in which the mystery surrounding the untimely death of the "protagonist" unfolds. Set mostly in the winter, it makes for wonderful winter reading as well.
This book was recently released to a lot of rave reviews. I read one such review in my local newspaper, so I put this book on reserve at the library. I'm glad I didn't buy it. I'd expected the "compulsively readable" true crime book described by reviewers.

This one wasn't compulsively readable. I had to pick it up several times and ended up flipping to the final chapters to find out what really happened. The prose isn't awful, but it wasn't compelling either.

A serious and constantly irritating aspect of this book, was the lack of a readable map, although the opening chapters describing the crime and the Peking of that era, constantly harped on specific locations. The only "map" is a highly stylized artist's drawing of - apparently - 1930's Peking, located as endpapers in the front and back of the book. This "map" is floridly colored, whimsically illustrated, full of difficult-to-read print, and apparently doesn't show such important locations as the oft-named street where the victim lived. Or anyway, if that information was there, I failed to locate it after several careful inspections.

I assume the author was correct in describing the events, and I thought the explanation he offered at the end was believable. The most interesting part of the book was the description of where the main players in the story, ended up during and after the Japanese invasion. I found it notable that Pamela Werner's father, old and iconoclastic, survived the hardships of a Japanese internment camp unbroken while younger people perished or emerged as wrecks.

As a crime story, it was a brutal tawdry tale. What happened to the victim was horrible, and shouldn't have been done, and the killers deserved to be caught and punished although they weren't. However, the world soon became ensnarled in warfare that brought such widespread horror and destruction, that it's almost a surprise that anyone resurrected this story at all.