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MIDNIGHT IN PEKING

Paul French

How the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of old China

January, 1937: Peking is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, lavish cocktail bars and opium dens, warlords and corruption, rumours and superstition – and the clock is ticking down on all of it.
In the exclusive Legation Quarter, the foreign residents wait nervously for the axe to fall. Japanese troops have already occupied Manchuria and are poised to advance south. Word has it that Chiang Kai-shek and his shaky government, long since moved to Nanking, are ready to cut a deal with Tokyo and leave Peking to its fate.

Each day brings a ratcheting up of tension for Chinese and foreigners alike inside the ancient city walls. On one of those walls, not far from the nefarious Badlands, is a massive watchtower – haunted, so the locals believe, by fox spirits that prey upon innocent mortals.

Then one bitterly cold night, the body of an innocent mortal is dumped there. It belongs to Pamela Werner, the daughter of a former British consul to China, and when the details of her death become known, people find it hard to credit that any human could treat another in such a fashion. Even as the Japanese noose on the city tightens, the killing of Pamela transfixes Peking.

Seventy-five years after these events, Paul French finally gives the case the resolution it was denied at the time. Midnight in Peking is the unputdownable true story of a murder that will make you hold your loved ones close, and also a sweepingly evocative account of the end of an era.
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Published 2011-08-29 by Viking

Book

Published 2011-08-29 by Viking

Comments

Midnight in Peking by Paul French has taken out the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Read more...

MIDNIGHT IN PEKING takes the reader back to 1937 and the brutal unsolved murder of an English schoolgirl in a city and a country on the edge of an abyss. Paul French wonderfully evokes that place in that time and, amazingly, manages to bring some sense of closure to this long-forgotten mystery. This book is an instant true crime classic which grips and hooks from the first page to the last.

Clue by clue, Paul French uncovers the truth of a bizarre murder case that shocked Peking in 1937. In doing so, he draws a chilling portrait of the city's decadent, violent and overly-privileged Euro-American expatriate community. It is a feat comparable to that of White Mischief. Fascinating and irresistible. I couldn't put it down.

Brings his vanished work back to vivid, pulsating life.. it is the storytelling flair that marks Midnight in Peking so highly above the run-of-the-mill true crime stories: with its false leads and twists, and the care taken never to reveal anything ahead of his protagonists, it sucks the reader in like the best fiction.

Paul French wonderfully evokes [the] place in that time and, amazingly, manages to bring some sense of closure to this long-forgotten mystery. This book is an instant true crime classic, which grips and hooks from the first page to the last.

French has an easy going prose style... well chosen quotes bring a new vigour and crispness... [French] succeeds in giving voice to a tragic quest for justice.

Midnight in Peking magically captures a strange, largely unknown time and place in modern history. It is not just a thrilling procedural. It is wise and compassionate and deeply human -- an astonishing achievement.

BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week Read more...

Simply marvelous! An atmospheric who-done-it in which the setting is pre-communist China, incorporating the last tottering edges of the British empire, a cast of enigmatic foreigners, and Peking bracing as Japan invades and brings the last of Old China to its knees. The mysterious and seemingly motiveless killing of a young English girl by a spirit-haunted gate in Peking is much more than it appears.

The best true crime stories are tales of place as well as people, evoking the long shadows of our often haunted history. And Paul French's book, Midnight in Peking, is among the best. As the mystery surrounding the bloody death of a young woman in pre-World War II Peking unfolds, French carries the reader on a journey through the city's twisting streets and equally twisted politics. The result is a real-life story ultimately as suspenseful as any modern thriller.

North America: Penguin US, published UK & Europe (English language): Viking Digest throughout ANZ & South Africa: Reader’s Digest Film: Kudos Italian: Einaudi, Norwegian: Oktober Portuguese throughout Portugal: Bertrand Editora Portuguese throughout Brazil: Editora Fundamento French: Belfond Chinese Simplified Characters: Anhui Times Chinese Complex Characters: Locus Publishing Spanish: Plataforma Polish: Czarne

Engrossing true crime whodunnit... He is good at marshalling the evidence gathered form the archives, and particularly skilful at evoking the atmosphere of prewar Peking with its gossip, its edginess and the bizarre and wholly unrealisistic life of privilege lived by many un the expat community. A terrific read.

Historian French unravels a long-forgotten 1937 murder in this fascinating look at Peking (now Beijing) on the brink of Japanese occupation. French painstakingly reconstructs the crime and depicts the suspects compelling evidence is coupled with a keen grasp of Chinese history in French's worthy account.

The shocking true tale combined with the author's ability to write prose you can't drag yourself away from, makes Midnight in Peking a work of non fiction as compulsive as any bestselling crime novel. It also brings justice at last for a young woman whose murder nearly went unsolved. (5 Stars)

Sale of television rights to the major UK production house Kudos.

Not only does Mr French succeed in solving the crime, he resurrects a period that was filled with glitter as well as evil.