Midnight in Peking by Paul French

I read some opinions on what would be good books to read prior to your first visit to China in the 21st century and this book was on such a list.  I am not sure why, because it is much more like a true life crime drama thatn a book that gets at the culture of the people there.  The one thing that is clear is that China has a history of occupation, colonization, fragmented rule, and war--this book is set in 1937, when China has three big problems converging all at once.  The first is that the English colonizers, who really have no power at that point, are still in China--which is a major miscalculation on their part, because the situation has deteriorated from a security point of view, and the British always have their families with them.  China in 1937 was no place for a foreign hostile presence to raise children.  The second was that the Japanese were rather successfully moving into China in a military way--that did not increase the stability for the English and contributed to the general lawlessness of the community.  The third major thing going on was a civil war with Chiang Kai Sheck's national forces fighting Mao's communist army.  We all know how the stories turn out, but that is the backdrop to the story.

A young girl is found mutilated and dead in a kind of no man's zone early one morning.  She is identified based on the color of her eye, the color of her hair, and a particular expensive watch that she is wearing; otherwise she is too mutilated, with her organs having been removed and an attempt made to dismember her that was apparently interupted.  All of which is quite gruesome, but the much sadder story is that the Brits were putting their families in harms way on a regular basis that they did not appreciate at the time, and the quilty parties were never brought to justice because of the subsequent events of war.