Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
To be honest, this book feels like there's a lot of information about characters that may have been given in easier books. I do feel that we are missing things we should have read about. This is why I dislike reading a series out of order. The Chinese Maze Murders feels incomplete. I feel like we are getting snippets of things that we would have complete information had we started from the beginning....
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I didn't feel that way, and had no problem following the story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I found the explanation for the reference to Chinese Bell Murders in the earlier Chinese Maze Murders here.
...Van Gulik had actually written his stories first in English, and he soon decided to proceed with their publication in that language also. The English preface of The Chinese Maze Murders is dated 1956 -- after the 1951 Japanese and the 1953 Chinese editions. Van Gulik evidently rewrote the three books slightly for the editions in English, since there is a reference in the Maze Murders to the Bell Murders and a reference in the Bell Murders to the Lake Murders, even though the latter books were written subsequent, not prior, to the former ones. In the chronology of Judge Dee's life, van Gulik at first wrote books from his later life and then moved forward.[/I] |
That appears to be a very satisfactory explanation as to why a reference to a later work appears in an earlier publication.