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Shvoong Home>Arts & Humanities>Arts>Midnight in Peking Summary

Midnight in Peking

Book Summary   by:SM THOMPSON     Original Author: Paul French
  • Summary rating: 5 stars (1 Ratings)
  • Visits : 24
  • words:600 
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The scandal surrounding former Chinese Politburo Bo Xilai has turned from political intrigue to something more sinister ... is the opening paragraph of Guardian Review: titled: Occidental death: Non Fiction and Rana Mitter on a
gripping account of a murder in China 75 years ago so its back to the plot.

Bo's wife Gu Kailai plotted to have Neil Heywood a British businessman killed and may have paid thugs to force him
to drink poison. This mixture .... of high politics, elite lifestyle and murder all in the setting of a rapidly changing China has caught the attention of millions of newspaper readers around the world who couldnt have found
Bo's city of Chongquing on a map three months ago .. so writes The Guardian Weekend edition June 9 2O12:

But there is a juxtaposition here of yet another murder in China with a pic provided of a Briton three quarters of a century ago so on the morning of 8 January 1937 the body of a 19 year old girl was found at the foot of the Fox Tower in Beijing and all the blood had been drained from her body .... her heart was missing. The victim was
Pamela Werner daughter of ETC Werner known in the British community as a former consul and academic sinologist; Pamela had been an expatriate schoolgirl, something of a loner keen on ice skating and listening to big bands on the radio ....... she spoke fluent Mandarin - was there a hidden side which led to her death!

Read on ... the Police were steered away from .... spotlight of blame on white community .. so possibly it was less embarrassing to consider it the work of Chinese ritual killers. And the Guardian writes that Paul French's narrative is spellbinding. Adding to this a respectable American dentist turns out to be the leader of a nudist club so the plot thickens I guess!

Guardian describes Pamela Werner's murder in this Review as "shocking". The review offers the notion of someone composing a similar tale around the mysterious death of Neil Heywood and such a book will evoke a society with too many secrets ........ so its crime writing that is featured here in this review and I gather from
our local Waterstones that that's the stuff of best sellers here in the South!

Rana Mitter's "Modern China: A Very Short Inroduction " is published by OUP: To order Midnight in Peking call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846!
Published: June 09, 2012   
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