Thanks to the recent posts in this thread
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...=150794&page=5 for kicking me in the butt to write something about
The Chinese Maze Murders. I did read it, it is just that I don't know I have anything especially insightful to add beyond what others have already said here. Anyway this is the thumbnail review I posted at Goodreads:
Quote:
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This was an interesting detective story type book. I liked how it seemed to be accurately set in T'ang Dynasty China, both in how the society and officialdom was organized, and in how people spoke and behaved. The use of torture as a means of solving crimes and the harsh punishments meted out may have offended my sensibilities, but I suppose that was also an accurate representation of the setting. Some things were a bit to obvious. For example in the case of the inheritance of the widow Yoo from the first mention of the scroll painting and the maze I knew how that would turn out.
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Expanding new thoughts that come to my mind based on others comments so far:
I was glad that there were no supernatural elements. I was interested in reading a mystery novel, not a fantasy book.
I thought that the women were portrayed and treated in the novel in a manner entirely consistent with reality of the setting of Chinese society at the time. With few exceptions, say royalty, women would have been treated as chattel. I did find the lesbian angle surprising, and do wonder what that said about van Gulik. On the other hand there would have been little sympathy or tolerance for a lesbian in T'ang Dynasty China.
I found the description of the executions at the end brutal, but again probably as it would have been back then. Punishment for treason by death via drawing and quartering persisted in England through the 18th century. I was interesting, and probably an accurate assessment of how wealth and social class would impact punishment, that the punishment for the traitor was commuted to a quick beheading, but the lesbian murderess was brutally flayed first.
I thought that the portrayal of the Chinese attitude towards the non-Chinese barbarians was also historically accurate. Just a people who the Chinese had a right to displace and subject.