THE WILLOW PATTERN: A Judge Dee Mystery

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Reprint. Paperback. Shelfwear; dampwarp to corner. A good reading copy.. 184pp. With illustrations in period style by the author, plus his postscript. 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 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. THE WILLOW PATTERN finds Dee coping with the administration of the plague-ridden Imperial Capital, while bringing his detective skills to bear on the mystery of three brutal, seemingly unconnected murders that could mean the extinction of the city's oldest, most aristocratic families.