The Wily Tao Gan

 

My daughters watched the TV versions of San Guo, Hongloumeng and many others, when they were kids.  When my younger one, who is now sixteen, says that she is interested in the Tang Dynasty, and I ask for more detail she tells me about costumes and court life that were first informed by those shows.  Looking for a new book we could read together and knowing her affinity for book series and has her lingering fascination with Sherlock Holmes, I thought to introduce her to the westernized version of the Judge Dee mysteries.  

 

"The Maze Murders" is, I believe, the first of Robert Von Gulick’s mystery novels about Judge Dee.  Di Ren Jie walked the earth during the reign of Wu Zetian during the Tang Dynasty, in the eighth century.  Later, during the Ming Dynasty, he was turned into a sagacious ideal-type of the no-nonsense official, who solved crimes during the Ming.  These stories were then popularized in contemporary China as television series.  But my collection of books was written by a  Dutch diplomat, stationed in Japan during the Cultural Revolution.  

 

The “Maze Murders” like all Van Gulick tellings, profile Judge Dee and his wonderful stock-sidekicks, like the rough-and-ready Sergeant Hoong and the wily Tao Gan who always, eventually, prove an indomitable team.  A sinologist, writing about China from across the water in Japan.  It must have been unsettling to write year-after-year about China and never be able to visit the place.  This series, to which I owe gratitude to my stepfather for having introduced me, also has charming and at times risqué illustrations every twenty, thirty pages or so.  I’ve skipped ahead in the Maze Mystery and noticed that there’s a scene coming up which is marvelous. 

I haven’t read it for fifteen years or so, but as I recall, Judge Dee is brought, during his sleuthing to the mountain home of a Daoist monk who artfully challenges the sternly Confucian brilliance of Judge Dee with a Chuangzi-like dismantling of one or another of Judge Dee’s otherwise solid understandings of the case and of his raison d'etre.  He leaves, and considers the unmistakable afterglow of something beyond the realm of Confucian certainties. It is the only time I can think of in the series when the Judge met his match.  

 

 

 

Wednesday, 04/07/21