When We Were Orphans (Paperback)

The plot was thin, perhaps because it was stretched over too long a book. Until the last tape the pace was too slow for a mystery. A few leaps backward and forward in time are acceptable but he made so many it became a bit difficult to follow the story line. Worse, he sometimes jumped from "A" to "C" in situations without going through "B," or even referring to it in "C" so we knew how he got to "C." An example of this was his acceptance of, and seeming agreement with, the assumption of the city councilman, his old schoolmate Morgan, and the Chinese family in his old home, that Christopher's parents were not only alive but still being held prisoner in Shanghi. We were not told about anything Christopher had discovered either in London or after arriving in Shanghi that would have justified that assumption.

In fact, we were not told about anything he had discovered in England that would indicate he had reason to believe his parents were still in Shanghi or even still alive. Yet there is an implication that he had discovered something, some lead or information that might make a trip to Shanghi worthwhile.

The great buzz that his arrival in Shanghi created and his VIP treatment was not believable. Even if he were a British detective of Sherlock Holmes' stature there would not be any reason for people living in Shanghi to be so impressed by him or to be so interested in his case---especially since the case was a personal one involving his parents. With the civil war raging around them and the Japanese invaders possibly about to seize Shanghi it was ridiculous to have some of the residents saying that they thought he could help with that situation.

A couple incidents of chance meetings would be believable because they do happen in real life. However, there are more than a lifetime of lucky chance meetings in this book. Finding the old Chinese detective through Morgan's recollection of him as a street bum, finding his childhood Japanese friend as a wounded Japanese soldier who will again act out the rescue of Christopher's parents, and finding the house of the old blind man through the driver Sara provided were all a bit too much. That last one especially because the driver was described as young, maybe even 15 years old, but he remembered the old blind actor from decades before and even knew where he lived. Unbelievable.

Also, the 1916 kidnapping incident he asked the former Chinese detective about (to locate the house where his parents might be held) would have been long before his parents were kidnapped. The probability that they were held in the same house from the time they were kidnapped until Christopher was a grown man with an international reputation (several decades?) was too small to make that whole part of his quest a logical course of action.

Even before he met them, the Chinese family living in his old home had apparently accepted that they would have to give it to because it had been his family home, even though the British company rather than his family owned it. Not believable.

This man who derided the foreigners in China for the way they treated the Chinese (They had no sense of shame about it.) berated and browbeat his Chinese driver and the Chinese lieutenant, both of whom risked their lives to help him find the house he wanted to locate. That destroyed much of my sympathy for him.

The Chinese lieutenant would not be likely to know about or care about Christopher's case and would be extremely unlikely to desert his post to lead Christopher to a house near or even behind the Japanese lines. Similarly, although he was supposed to be dedicated to finding his parents, Christopher quickly decided to run off with to Macau with another man's wife (shame?) but then just as quickly abandoned her at the waterfront (more shame?), along with the possessions he had selected as important enough to fit in the one suitcase she allowed him, so he could run off to find the house where he though his parents were still prisoners after several decades.

Having found the house he had risked his life, and the lives of others, to find, the great detective then spent time examining a wounded dog rather than quickly searching the house for his parents. There certainly are such dysfunctional people in real life but there are an unbelievable number of them in this book.

The warlord, Wang Po, was described as having taken Christopher's mother away "in the dead of the night." But we were previously told that she was kidnapped while Uncle Philip took him to the market during the day. How did Christopher learn about "Diana Roberts," the European woman who was being held in a missionary home for the aged in Hong Kong?

Did anybody edit this book? Did anybody check it for plot continuity and agreement?