A monkey and a tiger. Two quite different animals, each lending their name to a murder investigation in seventh-century China. Solving those mysteries - and, in at least one of those instances, doing so at the risk of his own life, was Judge Dee, the Chinese government official charged (among many other duties) with investigating crime and seeing to it that the perpetrators were properly punished. Judge Dee, in fact, was a real person, living from the year 630 to 700 and serving, for most of his distinguished career, as a government official during the T'ang Dynasty. The Judge Dee who appears in the stories and books written by Robert Van Gulik, is a fictional version of the "real" Judge Dee. This week, let's consider the book called The Monkey and the Tiger, two novella-length mysteries solved by Judge Dee. The book is the subject of my audio review this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you may listen to that complete review by clicking here.
The first novella in the book is called “The Morning of the Monkey.” It is set in the fictional lake district called Han-Yuan, where Judge Dee had spent about a year as the magistrate of the district. One morning, the Judge is sitting in the open gallery behind his residence, enjoying a moment off from his official duties. Suddenly, he hears a commotion in the trees as two monkeys – gibbons – swing through the branches. The judge sees that one of the monkeys is holding what appears to be a golden ring with a bright green gemstone. Judge Dee manages to fool the monkey into dropping the ring (he does this by distracting the animal). After the gibbons go on their way (leaving the ring behind), Judge Dee examines the emerald ring and sees what certainly appear to be bloodstains on it. He and one of his key assistants go exploring in a nearby deserted hut and discover the body of a vagrant who has been murdered – and who appears to have four fingers cut off from his left hand. This is the beginning of an adventure for Judge Dee, who will find that the murder apparently ties into a complex smuggling plot aimed at cheating the government out of its road taxes.
The second novella is called “The Night of the Tiger.” It is set a decade after “The Morning of the Monkey,” when Judge Dee – having been named the Lord Chief Justice in the Imperial Capital – is traveling on his way to the capital to take up his duties. He finds himself cut off from his assistants by a powerful flood – and, when he takes refuge in a large country house, he discovers that he has landed in a very dangerous place. The house – which, like Judge Dee, is cut off by the flood waters from possible rescue – is under siege by a dangerous and brutal gang of bandits called the Flying Tigers. They are threatening to kill everyone in that house unless they are paid ransom money – and there appears to be no source for that money, nor much hope of the military at a nearby post finding a way across the flood waters. As Judge Dee tries to find a solution for the problem, he finds himself confronted by the murder of a young woman and what appears to be a ghost that appears and disappears without warning. It’s a powerful, and quite dark, story – much darker, I think, than “The Morning of the Monkey.”
One of the reasons why I enjoy Robert Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries so much is that the reader is given a great deal of information in the stories about the regulations and the customs of the Chinese system of justice during the T’ang Dynasty period fourteen centuries ago, and about what everyday life was like back then. Van Gulik was a diplomat but he was also a scholar of traditional Chinese culture and literature, and his books – including The Monkey and the Tiger – reflect his passionate interest in ancient Chinese culture. The stories are powerful – and also a source of considerable enjoyment and entertainment.
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