Death of a Red Heroine

A TIME “100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time”

Meet Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police in this “refreshingly brave exploration into political China, woven around a tense thriller” (Huffington Post).

“A matchless pearl.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

A young “national model worker,” renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career—perhaps even his life—to see justice done.