{"id":573,"date":"2012-06-03T10:28:07","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=573"},"modified":"2012-06-03T10:28:07","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:28:07","slug":"paul-french-midnight-in-peking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/paul-french-midnight-in-peking\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul French: Midnight in Peking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The best true crime books have a few things in common.\u00a0 One is a vivid setting, one that\u2019s well described and felt.\u00a0 Even better is an unusual setting \u2013 in this case, the setting is Peking right before the Japanese took over in 1937.\u00a0 Another thing is a sense of outrage at what happened to the victim portrayed in the book \u2013 and the victim needs to be portrayed, not just presented as a dead body.\u00a0 Just like in a fictional mystery, investment in the victim is investment in the outcome of the story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Also the very top notch true crime books don\u2019t spend too much time in the courtroom.\u00a0 Anyone can go to a courtroom and take notes, not everyone can craft a narrative that\u2019s compellingly told.\u00a0 Paul French rarely dips a toe into the long ago courtrooms of China. And Mr. French does one more thing I\u2019m a big fan of (and it\u2019s rarely done) \u2013 he structures his book like a whodunit.\u00a0 The reader doesn\u2019t know whodunit it until the end of the book, and like any good whodunit, it\u2019s a jaw dropper.\u00a0 Books sharing this characteristic would include Edward Keyes\u2019 The Michigan Murders<\/em> and Kate Summerscale\u2019s instant classic The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher.<\/em><\/p>\n

Like Summerscale, French sets his book in the past, and like Summerscale, he gets some of the\u00a0 juice of a good crime story by making the reveal of the murderer almost unbelievable.\u00a0 If it was fiction, you would probably set the book aside in disgust.\u00a0 But that\u2019s the beauty of it all: it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a story you feel might be better known, because it\u2019s so terrible.\u00a0 One night in 1937 a young Englishwoman living in Peking is found brutally murdered \u2013 so brutally, that it makes almost no sense unless the killer was completely psychopathic.\u00a0 As French begins to roll back the layers of Pamela Werner\u2019s life, it emerges that she\u2019s the spoiled only daughter of an often absent academic father, a girl whose mother died before she could even remember her.<\/p>\n

As Pamela grew, she grew wild, getting kicked out of several schools.\u00a0 When we join her, she\u2019s been sent to a strict boarding school by her father in hope of changing her life direction.\u00a0 In the book, the reactions of her friends at school and at home are the same:\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s Pamela?\u201d\u00a0 The school girl Pamela looked her age (19), dressed in a drab school uniform; the at home Pamela was all decked out in fancy clothes with an up to the minute hairstyle.<\/p>\n

Her father was devoted to her, and one of the things that propels this book is his grief.\u00a0 It\u2019s sometimes impotent grief, as the contentious Edward Werner had burned many bridges throughout his professional life.\u00a0 As he reached out to the authorities, again and again, he is frequently rebuffed.\u00a0 It\u2019s heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

The two policemen investigating the case must work in an uneasy partnership \u2013 one is a Chinese, Colonel Han, and one is called in from out of town, an Englishman, Dick Dennis.\u00a0 As they can bridge essentially two cultures, they actually make a good team.<\/p>\n

All of foreign Peking lived in a separate area of the city, the Legation quarter, and Pamela and her father were no exception.\u00a0 This quarter was literally surrounded by a wall \u2013 though Pamela made her way freely all over the city on her bicycle.\u00a0 In fact, on the night in question, she\u2019d gone off on her bike to meet a friend and go skating.<\/p>\n

As Han and Dennis run into walls of things they are not supposed to ask and people they are not supposed to talk to, their investigation stalls.\u00a0\u00a0 When they finally throw in the towel, the specter of the invading Japanese is more on the minds of most people than the death of one young girl.\u00a0 It\u2019s up to her father to set things right.<\/p>\n

French\u2019s portrait of 1937 is a vivid and layered one, revealing all the different levels and classes of Peking society, from the upper class foreigners in the legation to prostitutes and madams and aimless white Russians, drinking their lives away.\u00a0 At the same time the portraits of Pamela, her father, Han, and Dennis are just as finely drawn.\u00a0 And he doesn\u2019t waste time telling the story \u2013 it moves at a brisk pace.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a heartbreaking tale, and a rich portrait of a very specific, very tragic time.\u00a0 This is a beautifully done and intelligent book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best true crime books have a few things in common.\u00a0 One is a vivid setting, one that\u2019s well described and felt.\u00a0 Even better is an unusual setting \u2013 in this case, the setting is Peking right before the Japanese took over in 1937.\u00a0 Another thing is a sense of outrage at what happened to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-true-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}