Series: Inspector Chen Cao

Love and Murder in the Time of Covid

Former chief inspector Chen faces a tricky serial murderer case at the height of the Covid pandemic - and risks everything he has when the Covid crisis is at its height in China. Under pressure from the Party to reach a quick conclusion and help maintain political stability, Chen investigates, aware that he too has been placed under omnipresent, omnipotent surveillance.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (book 13)
Publisher: Severn House (July 4, 2023)
Language: English
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Shadow of the Empire, A Judge Dee Investigation Book

The legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in this intriguing companion novel to Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder set in seventh-century China. Judge Dee Renjie, Empress Wu's newly appointed Imperial Circuit Supervisor for the Tang Empire, is visiting provinces surrounding the grand capital of Chang'an. One night a knife is thrown through his window with a cryptic note attached: 'A high-flying dragon will have something to regret!'

Series: Judge Dee Investigation (book 1)
Publisher: Severn House (January 1, 2022)
Language: English
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Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder

No longer a chief inspector, Chen Cao finds himself as director of the Shanghai Judicial System Reform Office. To outsiders it's a promotion, but Chen knows he's being removed from the spotlight as he's immediately placed on involuntary 'convalescence leave' to stop him interfering with any cases. However, with various high-profile crimes making headlines and fears escalating over vigilante reprisals, Chen's superiors know he must at least appear active. One case revolves around Min Lihau, a mingyuan, who runs a 'private kitchen' for powerful figures in Shanghai. Min's accused of murdering her assistant, yet Chen is struck by its similarities to a historic case involving the famous Judge Dee. Chen knows he can't stand idly by . . . but he must act in secret, under the cover of writing a Judge Dee novel.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (book 12)
Publisher: Severn House; Main edition (September 1, 2021)
Language: English
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Becoming Inspector Chen

After a number of grueling cases Chief Inspector Chen is facing mounting pressure from his superiors, many of whom are concerned with where his loyalties lie. What's more, he is excluded from an investigation into an incendiary poem posted on an online forum. Wracked with self-doubt and facing an anxious wait to discover the fate of his career, Chen is left to reflect on the events that have led to where he is now - from his amateur investigations as a child during the Cultural Revolution, to his very first case on the Shanghai Police Force. Why is he being kept away from the new case? As well as his career, is his life now also at risk?

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (book 11)
Publisher: Severn House; Main edition (February 1, 2021)
Language: English
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Hold Your Breath, China

A serial murder case set in China's disastrous air pollution, which leads to the heart-breaking tragedy of a young couple, and to a serial murder case in consequence. Chief Inspector Chen and Detective Yu Guangming are brought into a serial murder case when the Homicide squad proves incapable of solving it. But before Chen can make a start, he is called away by a high-ranking Party member for a special assignment: to infiltrate a group of environmental activists meeting to discuss the pollution levels in the country and how to prompt the government into action. Chen knows it will be a far from simple task, especially when he discovers the leader of the group is a woman from his past.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (book 10)
Publisher: Severn House; First World Publication edition (April 1, 2020)
Language: English
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Shanghai Redemption

For years, Chen Cao managed to balance the interests of the Communist Party and the promises made by his job. He was both a Chief Inspector of Special Investigations of the Shanghai Police Department and the deputy party secretary of the bureau. He was considered a potential rising star in the Party until, after one too many controversial cases that embarrassed powerful elements in the Party, Chen Cao found himself neutralized. Under the guise of a major promotion, a new position with a substantial title but no power, he's stripped of his job duties and isolated. That's still not enough, as it becomes increasingly clear that someone is attempting to set him up for public disgrace and possibly worse.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (book 9)
Publisher: Minotaur Books; Reprint edition (August 23, 2016)
Language: English
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Enigma of China

Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is in an unusual situation―a poet by training and inclination, he was assigned by the party to the Police Department after he graduated college, where he has continued to shine. Now he's a rising cadre in the party, in line to take over the top politic position in the police department, while being one of most respected policeman in the department. Which is why he's brought in by the Party to sign off on the investigation into the death of Zhou Keng.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (book 8)
Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (June 18, 2013)
Language: English
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Don't Cry, Tai Lake

Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is offered a bit of luxury by friends and supporters within the Party – a week's vacation at a luxurious resort near Lake Tai, a week where he can relax, and recover, undisturbed by outside demands or disruptions. Unfortunately, the once beautiful Lake Tai, renowned for its clear waters, is now covered by fetid algae, its waters polluted by toxic runoff from local manufacturing plants. Then the director of one of the manufacturing plants responsible for the pollution is murdered and the leader of the local ecological group is the primary suspect of the local police. Now Inspector Chen must tread carefully if he is to uncover the truth behind the brutal murder and find a measure of justice for both the victim and the accused.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 7)
Publisher: Minotaur Books (April 30, 2013)
Language: English
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Years of Red Dust: Stories of Shanghai

The stories in Years of Red Dust trace the changes in modern China over fifty years ― from the early days of the Communist revolution in 1949 to the modernization movement of the late nineties―all from the perspective of one small street in Shanghai, Red Dust Lane. From the early optimism at the end of the Chinese Civil War, through the brutality and upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, to the death of Mao, the pro-democracy movement and the riots in Tiananmen Square―history, on both an epic and personal scale, unfolds through the bulletins posted and the lives lived in this one lane, this one corner of Shanghai.

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (November 8, 2011)
Language: English
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The Mao Case

Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is the head of the Special Case group and is often put in charge of those cases that are considered politically "sensitive" since, as a rising party cadre, he's regarded by many as reliable. But Inspector Chen, though a poet by inclination and avocation, takes his job as a policeman very seriously, despite the pressures put upon him from within and without, and is unwilling to compromise his principles as a policeman in favor of political expedience.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 6)
Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (March 3, 2009)
Language: English
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Red Mandarin Dress

A serial killer is stalking the young women of Shanghai. The killer's calling card is to leave the victims' bodies in well trafficked locations, each of them redressed in a red mandarin dress. With the newspapers screaming about Shanghai's first serial killer, Party officials anxious for a quick resolution, and the police under pressure from all sides, something has to give.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 5)
Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1 Reprint edition (February 3, 2009)
Language: English
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A Case of Two Cities

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is assigned a high-profile anti-corruption case, one in which the principal figure has long since fled to the United States and beyond the reach of the Chinese government. But Xing left behind his organization, and Chen, while assigned to root the co-conspirators, is not sure whether he's actually being set up to fail.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 4)
Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (October 2, 2007)
Language: English
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When Red is Black

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is taking a vacation, in part because he is annoyed at his boss, Party Secretary Li, but also because he has been made an offer he can't refuse by Gu, a triad-connected businessman. For what seems to be a fortune—with no apparent strings attached— he is to translate a business proposal for the New World, a complex of shops and restaurants to be built in Central Shanghai, evoking nostalgia for the "glitter and glamour" of the 1930s.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 3)
Publisher: Soho Press (July 1, 2004)
Language: English
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A Loyal Character Dancer

Inspector Chen's mentor in the Shanghai Police Bureau has assigned him to escort US Marshal Catherine Rohn. Her mission is to bring Wen, the wife of a witness in an important criminal trial, to the United States. Inspector Rohn is already en route when Chen learns that Wen has unaccountably vanished from her village in Fujian. Or is this just what he is supposed to believe? Chen resents his role; he would rather investigate the triad killing in Shanghai's beautiful Bund Park. Li insists that saving face with Inspector Rohn takes priority. So Chen Cao, the ambitious son of a father who imbued him with Confucian precepts, must tread warily as he tries once again to be a good cop, a good man and also a loyal Party member.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 2)
Publisher: Soho Crime; Revised ed. edition (September 1, 2003)
Language: English
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Death of a Red Heroine

A young "national model worker," renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—to see justice done.

Series: Inspector Chen Cao (Book 1)
Publisher: Soho Crime; Reprint edition (July 1, 2003)
Language: English
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