Paul French probes a bone-chillingly true murder story in Midnight in Peking.

We’ve been anticipating Paul French’s account of a real-life crime in 1930s Beijing since he gave a talk about the book at the 2010 Shanghai International Literary Festival. The result, Midnight in Peking, is well worth the wait.

In 1937, the mutilated body of a young Caucasian girl was found at the base of the Fox Tower, close to the Legation Quarter in Beijing. She was the adopted daughter of Edward Werner, a former British consul and a prominent member of Beijing’s foreign community. Her clothing had been torn off. Her chest had been ripped open. Her body had been butchered and her heart removed. The city was stunned by the crime. People whispered of fox spirits, which were known to take on human shape and lure people to their deaths. Others blamed revivalists of the Boxer Cult. But the truth, which French has painstakingly pieced together, is both more terrifying and more unexpected, not least because it has remained unknown for so long.

French reconstructs the joint Chinese-British investigation into the murder, following DCI Dick Dennis, a British policeman with a background at Scotland Yard who was brought in from Tianjin to lead the enquiry. Dennis and his men peel back the layers of respectability that veneer Beijing’s polite society and uncover darker sides to the girl’s past. Their hunt eventually has them wading into the seedy swamp of Beijing’s “Badlands,” an area of pimps, prostitutes, opium dens and heroin dealers. We meet corrupt police, Russian gangsters, Korean madams, nudists, gunrunners and even a hermaphrodite.

French’s characters are richly detailed and idiosyncratic in a way that crackles with authenticity. No less good is his reconstruction of ’30s Beijing, a city maintaining a nervous calm as the shadow of war looms ever larger over its green-tiled rooftops. The Japanese forces, squatting a few miles outside the city, provide a ticking clock which ratchets up the tension, as news of the murder spreads through a community already fearing the coming descent into barbarism.

Much of the action in the first half of the book is dramatised, so we hear what these men and women are thinking, saying and feeling. At times this can feel a little speculative and forced, but in general the research French has done is thorough enough and his knowledge of Chinese history is sufficiently impressive that it’s hard not to get swept away. His descriptions are natural and effective, notably of Beijing’s achingly cold winters and the shabby realities of life as an impoverished immigrant in that harsh city.

In the second half, French sticks to the facts and lets the story tell itself. And what a sad, horrible and riveting one it is, as the strands of the investigation come together only to fray due to police incompetence and official obfuscation.

Midnight in Peking is a brisk and engrossing tale that will entertain fans of crime fiction as much as it will Sinophiles. French has uncovered and solved a mystery that is every bit as colourful, rich and lurid than any paperback thriller

Midnight in Peking is available from Douban for USD32.95 or from Taobao for RMB149 plus RMB9 for shipping.