The Murder of Mr. Ma

January 1, 2024

This action-packed series opener full of historical detail from popular, multi-award-winning Rozan ("Lydia Chin/Bill Smith" mystery series) and debut author Nee, a past executive at both DC and Marvel, is set in 1920s London and introduces Judge Dee Ren Jie and academic Lao She as a Holmes-and-Watson-like duo. Prepub Alert.

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February 1, 2024
Nee and Rozan unfold a tale in which Mr. Ma is only the first of many casualties in 1924 London. Shortly after the philosopher Bertrand Russell introduces Judge Dee Ren Jie to University of London lecturer Lao She, who is to become the judge's Watson, Ma Ze Ren, who survived the Great War as part of the Chinese Labour Corps and then opened a London shop selling Chinese antiquities, is fatally stabbed with a butterfly sword. Judge Dee swings decorously into action, questioning first Ma's longtime customer Colonel Livingstone Moore and then American poet Ezra Pound and his equally disdainful English friend, Viscount Whytecliff, and turning young pickpocket Jim Finney, aka Jimmy Fingers, into an informant. But his investigation comes too late to save dockworker Ching Pan Lu, another veteran of the Chinese Labour Corps, who's found dead of a similar wound. Any suspicions of coincidence are laid to rest by a third murder, then a fourth. Judge Dee, though fighting his addiction to opium, manages to come up with a plausible reason why so many members of the battalion have met sudden deaths and to excel in the bouts of martial arts in which so many scenes of conflict end. Lao She, no slouch in these ritual battles, proves an able amanuensis except for the many times he apologetically interrupts himself to allow the story to shift back to Judge Dee's perspective. The effects are unsettling, but not nearly as much as all those fisticuffs among gentlemen who really ought to know better. First of a series that's acutely attuned to British racism between the two world wars.

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Starred review from February 12, 2024
Rozan (the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith novels) teams up with debut author Nee for a bewitching series kickoff that cleverly riffs on the Holmes/Watson dynamic with the investigative duo of novelist and lecturer Lao She and Judge Dee Ren Jie. In 1924 London, Lao (the Watson figure) is summoned by mathematician Bertrand Russell after Dee, Russell’s friend, is mistakenly arrested with a group of Chinese agitators. Concerned that Metropolitan Police inspector William Bard, whom Dee angered during WWI while resolving disputes between Chinese laborers and the British soldiers who recruited them to provide support in France, will discover that Dee’s been locked up, Russell convinces Lao to help him spring the judge from jail. Though their scheme goes south, Dee manages to escape, and he enlists Lao’s help in probing the murder of shopkeeper Ma Za Ren, who was under Bard’s command during the war. Someone fatally stabbed Ma in his store with one of the ornamental weapons he had for sale. Given Bard’s harsh anti-Chinese biases, Dee doubts the official inquiry will be thorough enough to settle on anything but the most obvious explanation, and dedicates himself to getting justice for his countryman. The intricate plot, which is bolstered by vivid period detail and playfully riffs on real-life figures in Chinese history (including Lao), is enhanced by healthy doses of humor and well-orchestrated action. Readers will be clamoring for a sequel. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary.