A married woman that Chen had been seeing, Wang, becomes quickly frustrated with his new dedication to his work, and she stops seeing him, returning to her husband. The only detail of interest is that she had consumed expensive Russian caviar shortly before her death.Ĭhen begins investigating, and the case soon consumes every aspect of his life. Xia, who tells him that Guan Hongying had never had children and her body had no scars. He then calls the doctor who performed the autopsy, Dr. He calls Guanming to ask for an update and is frustrated to find no progress has been made. He receives a phone call informing him that one of his poems has been accepted for publication by a national newspaper, and this reminds him of the dead woman. Chen has many cases and his workload is crushing, and the case quickly falls off his radar, and he leaves the dull work to Guanming. However, the body is identified as Guan Hongying, a celebrity and former model, which puts a political spin on the case, so Chen decides to keep it. Initially there are no obvious leads, and when Chen learns that another department is willing to take the murder off his workload, he strongly considers it. His partner is Yu Guanming, who is his subordinate, but who has no respect for Chen initially. He has however kept up with his poetry, and has published to some success. He was an English major in college and intended to be a diplomat, but when it’s discovered that his uncle was a counter-revolutionary, the Party assigned him a career in law enforcement.

He owes his rise in the department to the politics of the Communist Party. Chen is not a typical police officer he is an enthusiastic poet and not particularly interested in police work.

The investigation is assigned to Chief Inspector Chen, a member of the Shanghai Special Case Squad.

The story begins with the discovery of a body in the remote Baili Canal, twenty miles west of Shanghai. Set in Shanghai in the early 1990s, Xiaolong explores the politics and rapidly-shifting culture of modern-day China through the lens of a murder investigation.

Death of a Red Heroine is a mystery novel by Qiu Xiaolong, published in 2000.

Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong