Midnight in Peking

A father’s stubborn determination to find his daughter’s killers is the core of Paul French’s true account of the 1937 murder of a British girl in Midnight in Peking.  French takes us back in time to a jittery city at the breaking point.  The Japanese army has encircled Peking and its only a matter of time before the city is captured.  It’s in this charged atmosphere that an English teen is murdered, her body carved up and dumped near the "haunted" Fox Tower.

Two detectives, British DCI Richard Dennis and Chinese Detective Han Shih-Ching team up to try to discover her killers.  But from the beginning mistakes abound – evidence is mishandled, information is leaked, and someone higher up meddles with witnesses and interferes with the investigation.   The search slumps along without success until the trail becomes cold and the detectives move on to other crimes.

Here is where the story gets really interesting.   By all accounts, the girl’s father, E.T.C. Werner, was an odd and difficult man.  A scholar at heart, Werner was content to spend his time surrounded by his books.  He wasn’t very social but when he was with people he seemed quick to antagonize them, including the police. As a result, Dennis and Han pretty much ignored him (except for suspecting him of the crime) and lost a valuable resource in the process.  When the police finally closed the case, Werner began his own investigation.  Despite being in his 70s, Werner left his orderly home to delve into the seedy underbelly of Peking and visit brothels and drug dens.  He met with criminals and shady characters and eventually pieced together what happened to Pamela that night.

Midnight in Peking is not for those of you with weak stomachs.  The murder was atrocious and French’s descriptions are vivid and sickening.  But if you like a good murder mystery, you should give this book a try.  The search for the killers, the uncovering of the clues, and the many interesting characters, especially the cantankerous E.T.C. Werner, makes this nonfiction mystery a fascinating read.