"The story line is fast-paced: Bao Zheng is a great character; and the supporting cast adds depth to the plot." Strand Magazine
1999. China's transformational decade is coming to a close. A giant clock in Tiananmen Square is ticking away the weeks, days, hours and seconds till the start of the new millennium.
But not everyone is celebrating. On the streets of Beijing, a small religious cult is attracting young people dissatisfied with materialism and the harshness of modernity. When Inspector Bao Zheng's sister-in-law joins, there is little that he or his wife can do.
Then the cult leader is murdered. Bao gets himself assigned to the case, but hits a wall of silence and suspicion. But does the answer to the case lie outside the walls of the cult's remote, austere compound, anyway?
Rumours start seeping out that the new leader is planning a grand, destructive gesture to coincide with the new era. Bao needs to both find the killer and prevent this, while that giant clock keeps ticking down...
Chris West is a British writer. He works in a range of genres: business, psychology, history and crime / general fiction. His China Quartet, four mysteries written in the 1990s, were among the first crime novels to be set in the contemporary People's Republic of China.
Praise for the Inspector Bao Zheng series:
'Does for China what Gorky Park did for Russia.' Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel
'Few authors since Robert van Gulik have been able to create such a wonderful picture of Chinese society.' Mystery Review
'A perfect melding of character, plot and atmosphere. My number one read for the year.' Mid-West Review
'Not only an ingenious whodunit, but an inquest into the Cultural Revolution and the violence it did a generation. Skilfully assembled, with people and places vividly rendered, and with history speeding through the narrative like adrenalin.' Philip Oakes, Literary Review
'A dazzling tour of contemporary Beijing life.' Publishers Weekly
'A bang-up-to-date commentary on the dilemmas of modern China, where young and old are grappling with the change from ancient traditions and Marxism to consumer-crazy Westernization.' Tangled Web
'Teasing and cunning, with lots of misleading clues.' Gerald Kaufman, The Scotsman
