THE LACQUER SCREEN: A Chinese Detective Story: A Judge Dee Mystery

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Paperback. Light shelfwear. Very good.. 183pp. With illustrations in period style by the author, map and textual notes. Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and authority on Chinese history and culture, drew the plots from his stories from the body of Chinese literature, especially from popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century. Each Judge Dee mystery features three original Chinese plots, rewritten to form one continuous story, featuring master detective Judge Dee, one of the most famous master detectives who lived in the T'ang Dynasty of the seventh century A.D. In THE LACQUER SCREEN, the Chinese Sherlock Holmes travels to a nearby province, where he goes undercover, disguised as a petty crook and hobnobbing with a robber king to expose the cases of The Lacquered Screen, The Credulous Merchant, and The Faked Accounts.