The Eye of Jade
A Mei Wang Mystery, Book 1
Diane Wei Liang
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Mei Wang was a rising star in China, with a bright future ahead of her in the ministry of public security. But a bad situation led her to resign the prestigious post. Now, she works as an independent "information consultant" in Beijing - actually a private investigator, but that job is technically illegal, so she did what so many citizens do and found a loophole. She has an apartment, a car, an eager male assistant from the rural provinces, and a steady stream of business... everything but the respect of her mother, who laments that Mei has no interest in marriage or bettering her status in the Party (especially after the shame of resigning from the ministry), and sister, who married into wealth and power and makes sure nobody forgets it. She tells herself she doesn't care what they think, that she's happy living her life on her own terms. Then an old family friend, Uncle Chen Jitian, comes to Mei with a case involving smuggled antiquities. As Mei digs into the matter, she finds herself digging into the tangled, bloody history of the Cultural Revolution, and - unexpectedly - into the pasts of her mother and late father.
REVIEW: Written by a Chinese expatriate, The Eye of Jade takes readers into modern (well, just before Hong Kong's reversion to Beijing's control) China with an unconventional protagonist and a mystery that wends through the country's complicated history. Like so many her age, Mei Wang grew up full of hope for China's bright future, only to find those hopes tempered or outright dashed by time and experience and ever-shifting politics (too often accompanied by ever-shifting webs of corruption and internal back-scratching). The parents of her generation were directly involved in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution where so much was destroyed (and the seeds of so many modern troubles were planted, often watered with blood), creating a generational gap that is difficult to bridge under the best of circumstances. Mei's circumstances are not exactly the best; her relationship with her mother has always been fraught, as Mei has never understood how the woman could have left her beloved father to languish in a labor camp until the end of his days (having been sentenced for politically unpopular sentiments in his writings and poetry). Living in the shadow of her little sister, who found (apparent) happiness in the arms (and bank accounts) of a wealthy businessman, doesn't help with family harmony much. Still, Mei is determined to live her own life by her own principles, even as a class reunion dredges up hard memories of the woman she thought she'd be by now. The antique smuggling investigation gives her something to dive into, a case that wends through various seedy characters and Beijing's many districts and social strata and which seems to draw some dangerous interest from powerful players... but the two parts of her life may not be as disconnected as she initially thinks.
The plot sometimes feels stretched thin, like it can't quite decide if it's more about the case and establishing Mei Wang the detective for a possible series, or if it's more about Mei Wang the conflicted modern Chinese woman coming to terms with her family and her own path in life. When her mother suffers a sudden health crisis, the investigation is pushed to the back seat for an awfully long time - the same as when a former love interest returns from years abroad, still bearing a torch that she long ago snuffed out (or thought she did). Eventually the tale gets back on track, but by then I had to mentally backtrack to remember just where Mei had paused things and what she was up to after the side trips, leading to an ending that, frankly, felt like a bit of a letdown. I also expected more character development for her underling, who felt rather extraneous and forgotten by the end. Along the way, the city of Beijing and life in modern China come alive in many details. I doubt I'll read on in the series (which only looks like it continues through one more book anyway), but it was an intriguing glimpse into a part of the world I haven't read too much about, and a different sort of detective.
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