Death Notice.
Haohui, Zhou (author). Translated by Zac Haluza.
June 2018. 320p. Doubleday, $26.95 (9780385543323); e-book, $13.99 (9780385543330).
REVIEW. First published May 1, 2018 (Booklist).

When Captain Pei Tao of the suburban Longzhou police is found crouched over the bloodied body of Sergeant Zheng Haoming, Chengdu’s most revered detective, he insists that the murder is connected to Zheng’s investigation of a notorious cold case. Eighteen years ago, Pei’s girlfriend, Meng Yun; his police-academy roommate, Yuan Zibang; and a Chengdu police detective were killed by a vigilante using the moniker Eumenides. Now Pei, after receiving a letter from Eumenides announcing that his “final act” will take place soon, has come to Chengdu hoping to join forces with Zheng. Although reluctant to eliminate Pei as a suspect, Zheng’s commander, Captain Han Hao, allows Pei to join the new Eumenides task force. As the task force scrambles to protect those targeted in Eumenides’ proclamations, Pei and the team’s criminal psychologist, Mu, revisit the killer’s first crime, revealing the dangerous competition between Pei and Meng that spawned Eumenides. Zhou’s story is thoughtfully constructed (and skillfully translated), balancing an exploration of loyalty, jealousy, and the moral tension between law and justice with Pei’s sharp observations and gifted logic. This procedural, the first novel in China’s most popular suspense trilogy, boasts the rich cultural immersion, the bird’s-eye view of procedural technique in an international police force, and the complex mysteries that have long driven the popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction.

— Christine Tran

Heard good things about this one but unfortunately was not able to work it into my reading rotation.

Death Notice is an unusual thriller set in contemporary China. We follow a detective as he investigates the murder of a respected police officer. The brutal murder and the strange circumstances, lead our detective to analyze a cold case. I tend to enjoy detective novels that are set in places that I haven't travelled, so Zhou Haohui's Death Notice was a treat! There is considerable action and red herrings and we travel to a major city in China as well as the countryside. Overall, an unusual detective mystery set in contemporary China that kept me engrossed!

First published in China in 2014; published in translation by Doubleday on June 5, 2018

The Chengdu police have formed a task force to investigate the murder of police sergeant Zheng Haoming. Eighteen years earlier, a task force investigated the murders of the vice commissioner of Chengdu’s criminal police and two police academy students. The killer prepared “death notices” announcing those executions in advance. Given the Chinese government’s culture of secrecy, the murders were never made public, nor were they solved. The unsolved murders are relevant because a death notice was also prepared for Zheng before his murder. The notices identify the executioner as Eumenides, one of the Furies of Greek mythology.

Ironically, Zheng had been a member of the task force examining the original murders eighteen years earlier. His journal reveals that he began to reinvestigate the murders. Soon after Zheng is killed, Eumenides apparently accomplishes several more murders under the collective noses of the Chengdu police.

The novel follows several officers who work to uncover the identity of Eumenides. The story primarily follows a police psychologist named Mu Jainyun, who uncovers a potential link between the original murders and a drug bust that occurred a month earlier. Meanwhile, the other officers are either accusing each other of keeping secrets or doing not much of anything.

Death Notice isn’t the kind of whodunit that invites the reader to piece together clues and catch the killer. It’s more of a Chinese police procedural. The political and bureaucratic concerns that impede a proper investigation are interesting but underplayed, perhaps to avoid censorship of a novel that might be seen as exposing the inefficiency or corruption of Chinese policing. It is a common theme in crime fiction that escaping justice is a privilege of wealth, and that theme is advanced in Death Notice, but in a way that seems watered down compared to western crime novels.

The novel’s big reveal comes out of the blue, with an explanation tacked on in an epilogue. Death Notice is the first book in a trilogy, however, so don’t expect the story to be fully resolved by the end of the novel.

Characters tend to be underdeveloped stereotypes. They might gain more weight later in the series. The prose is often trite. That might be the fault of the translator, or it might be that what has become trite in western crime fiction is considered fresh in China.

Tired themes from horror novels (a man burned beyond recognition wanders through the novel) mix with familiar themes of justice (unpunished crimes must be avenged), although whether people (horrific or not) who carry out acts of vengeance outside the law are actually dispensing justice is questionable. Perhaps later novels in the trilogy will explore that question in greater depth; this one ducks the issue, and did too little to persuade me to continue with the remaining novels in the trilogy. Death Notice is interesting, primarily for being set in Chengdu, but it is far from compelling.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

This is a five-star book for plot lovers. A serial killer appears to be playing games with the police, delivering death notices specifying not only who will be killed, but precisely when. These set up clever contests in which the author plays fair--by [[ASIN:B005HFW8A8 Mission Impossible]] rules at any rate. The police take every reasonable precaution the reader can think of, yet the killer comes up with an unexpected but credible assassination (as in Mission Impossible, "credible" means logical but requiring a level of preparation, clockwork precision and anticipation that would probably doom any real attempt).

These apparent games are actually moves in a much subtler 18-year-old crime and investigation. The complex parallel investigations are handled masterfully, they never collapse into confusion, nor does the author cheat at any point. There are no loose threads, no important information concealed from the reader.

Unfortunately, there is not much more to the book than plot. The characters are one-dimensional, and do not develop. The dialog is pedestrian, and often used to give information to the reader rather than represent realistic conversation. A lot of the action is explained through the thoughts of characters, which not only lacks literary elegance, is unfair because the author does not tell us everything the characters are thinking at the time. There is no sense of place, if the author didn't name locations you would have no idea where in the world the events were happening (okay, all the characters having Chinese names might incline you to guess it was probably a place with predominantly Chinese people, but that's it).

I don't read Chinese so I can't comment on the translation other than to say it seems a bit wooden, with some odd phrasings for a native English speaker, but nothing that conveys the feel of the original language.

Zhou Haohui is a very famous author in China and this is the first of a series. Eumenides, a mysterious figure, sends "Death Notices" to people who got away with something: either an actual crime that could not be proven, or a very ethically wrong act that was not illegal (ie. causing a suicide). The police resurrect an old task force to stop these very gruesome murders, which I must say are pretty creative. You think that, since the victims are being protected by the police, it would be impossible for Eumenides to get to them but somehow it always works out and the game of cat and mouse keeps escalating. Why am I giving this novel only 2 stars? It may be a cultural issue, or a personal one but I simply failed to connect with the characters. At all. They seemed fake and stereotypical. The secrets that they are hiding are very unexpected, but I wasn't invested in the outcome of the investigation. I should have loved this novel, but I just didn't care if the characters lived or died. That said, the plot is not bad and it may just have been a personal preference.

Since this was originally published as serialized fiction in China, cliffhangers abound, and the book has a strong soap opera pace and cadence. Fans of the move Se7en will appreciate the more gruesome aspects of the story.

Like most translated fiction, the fun is in the nuances of language, culture, behavior and tone, and Death Notice does not disappoint. While I don't feel this is the strongest crime novel I've read (the cliffhanger aspect makes for some true horror movie moments---"You're really going to go into that cave alone?!"), the glimpse into Chinese contemporary culture more than makes up for the at-times-sappy plot and character motivation.

It was a great book. I only wish that it didn't end in a cliffhanger. I wish I didn't have to wait a year