A Judge Dee Detective Story: The Lacquer Screen

JUDGE DEE was a historical person who lived from 630 to 700 A.D. In addition to earning fame as a detector of crimes, he was also a brilliant statesman who, in the second half of his career, when he was serving as a Minister at Court, greatly influenced the internal and foreign policies of the Tang Empire. The adventures related here, however, are entirely fictitious, although many features were suggested to me by original old Chinese sources. The puzzling suicide I borrowed from a case recorded in the Chinese collection by Hsü Mu-hsi, Ku-chin-chi-an-wei-pien (Strange Cases of Old and Modern Times)......