Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee

Last autumn I saw Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and thought it was a hoot. I read about it and discovered that Detective Dee has a long literary pedigree. Diplomat and sinophile Robert van Gulik stumbled upon the stories that comprise this book while stationed in Tokyo before America declared war on Japan. He would spend time during the war translating them into English and would go on to write a series of his own detective stories featuring Dee Goong An or “Judge Dee”.

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee was written by an unknown author in the 18th century. Judge Dee is based on Di Renjie, a Chinese magistrate who lived in the 7th century. Given the date of authorship, one must dispel the notion that Poe invented the detective genre. However, as van Gulik notes in introduction, Chinese detective novels generally differ from their Western cousins greatly although the stories here are more akin to tales Western audiences are used to.

The introduction is lengthy but informative. It is divided roughly into two parts. The first talks about the conventions of the Chinese detective story genre and how the Judge Dee stories depart from them. Van Gulik notes five characteristics that differentiate the Chinese version from the one birthed by Poe. First is that the bad guy is revealed right away; second is the presence of the supernatural which means that animals and kitchen utensils give testimony in court; next is the attention to detail. There are digressions of various sorts and any official documents mentioned in the story are reproduced in full. “The Chinese reader likes his novels well-populated,” van Gulik says and so they traditionally have a cast list of 200+. Lastly, the Chinese like a detailed description of the punishment the way we Westerners want every detail of how the crime was carried out.

The second part gives the reader some background on the Chinese judicial system of Dee's time. Today, Law & Order tells us that “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.” Fourteen hundred years ago in China, magistrates like Judge Dee essentially had both roles. He is the alpha and omega for his district although he ultimately reports to higher authorities.

There are three celebrated cases: “The Double Murder at Dawn”, “The Strange Corpse”, and “The Poisoned Bride”. Dee finds his hands full here as, at one point, he is working on all three at once. “The Double Murder at Dawn” involves the death of a couple silk merchants whose bodies are found just outside the gates of Six Mile Village. Warden Pang, basically the village sheriff, comes to Judge Dee accusing the owner of a hostel, Koong Wan-Deh, of having committed the murders since they were his guests. Of course the mystery is not so easily solved as Koong, upon verifying the identities of the bodies, testifies that one of them was unknown – not one of his guests the previous night.

As I noted above, Dee is his district's top cop and so he travels to the scene of the crime but in disguise, which is another trope of the the genre. Posing as a perambulating doctor, he sets out to find out more about the death of the silk merchant and the unknown man. During his travels he runs into Mrs. Bee who takes him to her home to administer a remedy. There he finds a peculiar situation. Mrs. Bee's son, Bee Hsun, died a year ago yet his widow, Mrs. Djou, doesn't appear particularly distraught. Furthermore, their daughter went deaf and dumb at the same time her father died. Dee surmises that Bee Hsun's death was not by natural causes.

These two cases provide the bulk of the story here with the last one, “The Poisoned Bride”, being dispatched with rather quickly. Here Mr. Hua comes to Dee's compound and rings the gong. (Anyone can bring a matter to a judge's attention by doing so.) Hua informs Dee that his son's bride, Miss Lee, was poisoned by Candidate Hoo, a friend of the groom. This case see Dee entering the upper crust of Chinese society for the first time as Hua is a former prefect and is now basically a university professor.

Going against tradition, we don't find out the identity of the perpetrators right away. But these disclosures don't come out until the very end either. There is a good deal of sleuthing before Dee ascertains who dunnit but there is also a lot more done to find the proof needed to ultimately bring the criminals to justice. The supernatural is minimized here with only two such instances: Dee briefly meets a ghost and has a dream of significance. Neither of these proves revelatory but rather confirm suspicions and gently prod Dee in the right direction. Having said this, I have no problem with the idea of a cat or bamboo spatula testifying in court.

There are much less than 200 characters here and a helpful list of dramatis personae is included. Only one official document is given in full. On the other hand, the torture scenes and the punishments Dee hands out are given in some gruesome detail. There is a beheading, a strangulation which causes eyeballs to pop out, and one criminal is given the “lingering death”, i.e. - sliced into pieces.

Usually when I encounter a non-American tale, I feel like every cultural reference and subtext is out of my reach. Here, though, van Gulik's introduction and translator's notes did a good job of keeping most of the story intelligible to me. He patiently explains how Chinese beliefs in spirits and the afterlife make exhuming a body such a big deal, for example, or how familial obligations can sway a judge to commute punishment so the criminal can attend to supporting family.

The one thing that takes a little getting used to is the style of the text. It is very straightforward with almost no adornment. If Judge Dee walks to a town we are told he walks to a town without any hint as to what he thought about on his journey or any interesting things he saw on it. The layouts of buildings are given but the spaces themselves are not described with much in the way of meaningful detail. Ergo I pictured the towns and buildings in the story as places from movies I've seen. The dialogue is also concise. Characters rarely say more than is needed and, for the most part, witty rejoinders are absent. People are more defined by their duties than their dialogue.

While it was rather odd to read this style, the stories were still engrossing. Aside from the who dunnit aspect, part of the fun was delving into uncharted territory. How would the story conform to and depart from genre conventions? Plus there was the fact that the story takes place in a foreign culture nearly 1400 years ago. How is it different from my own culture?

I'd like to read more authentic Chinese detective stories but am unsure what has been translated into English.