Customer Reviews

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

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This is the sad but true story of Pamela Werner, she was a plucky 19 year old adopted daughter of a former British consul - Edward Werner. She was brutally murdered and mutilated on a cold January night in the pre Communist Peking of 1937 and left for the wild dogs to feast on outside the allegedly haunted Fox Tower.

Paul French came across the story by chance by reading the autobiography of American journalist Helen Snow, who had gained fame for her shenanigans in China during the violent years that surrounded the Second World War - she had been there at the time and had felt that Pamela might have been mistaken for her on that fateful night. French has pieced together a ton of evidence and visited the sites of Peking to properly get a feel for the events. He also places the events into the historical and political context of the time; this was during the running sore of the Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists as well as the Japanese incursion from Manchuria where their puppet regime was being used for further territorial gains of the new Japanese Empire. Whilst the Imperial Japanese Army gnawed at the gates normal life became more difficult in the now ex capital and a murder investigation became almost impossible. Both the Chinese police and the British Legation detective soon let the trail go cold, but Pamela's father was made of sterner stuff and the more he looked, the more skeletons fell out of more cupboards.

I found this to be an utterly absorbing read; from page one I was pretty much hooked. This is not because of the interesting story but because French has a style that is both accessible and engrossing. He has also provided a wide range of source material that shows he is not making stuff up, as I did think on a couple of occasions that he was using a bit of poetic licence with the tale, but no, he is just retelling the facts in a more vibrant way. He also has some pictures both from the time and of the places today which help make the characters come to life. All in all a great little piece of forgotten history that is brilliantly told and I very much look forward to his next one.

This NOVEL is a DRAMATISATION of a murder that happened in the late 1930s when the Japanese had invaded China, and the Chinese left and right wing factions were fighting each other for control.
If you want history,or even historical atmosphere, do not bother with this book. If you want a murder mystery, look elsewhere.

The NOVELIST (do not be deceived- this man is no historian)has used notes made by the father of the murdered girl, and has based his NOVEL around this. If anyone, it would be the father, that has "solved" the crime, not this NOVELIST. But neither of them have.

This NOVEL is cliched and repetative.The expats are described as wasters, drunks, womanisers, "bright young things", "old China hands", "fast set", pompous, stiffupperlip....you name it, it is there... and on each page these people are taking tiffins or propping up bars. This NOVELIST pads out the book by such repetition you wonder if an editor ever went near it.

Clearly the NOVELIST is writing for a screen play, not for history, as why else would he fabricate dialogue, private thoughts, pass off rumour as truth, try and construct a conspiracy theory, and describe scenes he did not see. These parts are not even well written: "who does a dentist's dentistry?". Tiresome.

The NOVELIST might find his "research" exhausting, but absence of footnotes, biased sources, omissions, lack of fact-checking makes it all untrustworthy. Fitzmaurice returns to China as consul despite the threats to his family and also becomes prisoner of Japanese. The Kings Royal Surrey regiment never existed.

Crime must be solved beyond reasonable doubt. Supposition, and there is alot of it here, is not proof. It is also handled clumsily; pages and pages of "what could be more likely" -type exposition. The NOVELIST is selective in what he presents. Werner, and therefore the NOVELIST, becomes the hero. Of course.

It is dishonest of this writer to:
1. pass off someone else's (Werner's) work as his own
2. claim status as a historian, analyst, reporter, when he fabricates, and fails to corroborate suppositions, is biased, and cannot get basic facts right in a "factual" account
3. hide behind the "novel" title and yet passes this dross off as "history". Or vice versa.

If you want history, read "Wild Swans" , or the biography of Mao by the same author. try "Empire of the Sun", for autobiography of child caught up in the japanese prison camps. They are all gripping, well written, and the research is there.

The NOVELIST is quoted as wanting this book to be like "In Cold Blood". (Penguin is quoted as saying to the author: "You are no Capote") The proof in those murders was beyond reasonable doubt, hence the trial/verdict. This NOVEL is supposition. There is no resolution. If you want to read about crime, read Capote's "In Cold Blood".

This book is like squeezing a corpse for cash; just cant figure out if it is the father or the daughter who has been screwed the most?

This NOVEL is a DRAMATISATION of a murder that happened in the late 1930s when the Japanese had invaded China, and the Chinese left and right wing factions were fighting each other for control.
If you want history,or even historical atmosphere, do not bother with this book. If you want a murder mystery, look elsewhere.

The NOVELIST (do not be deceived- this man is no historian)has used notes made by the father of the murdered girl, and has based his NOVEL around this. If anyone, it would be the father, that has "solved" the crime, not this NOVELIST. But neither of them have.

This NOVEL is cliched and repetative.The expats are described as wasters, drunks, womanisers, "bright young things", "old China hands", "fast set", pompous, stiffupperlip....you name it, it is there... and on each page these people are taking tiffins or propping up bars. This NOVELIST pads out the book by such repetition you wonder if an editor ever went near it.

Clearly the NOVELIST is writing for a screen play, not for history, as why else would he fabricate dialogue, private thoughts, pass off rumour as truth, try and construct a conspiracy theory, and describe scenes he did not see. These parts are not even well written: "who does a dentist's dentistry?". Tiresome.

The NOVELIST might find his "research" exhausting, but absence of footnotes, biased sources, omissions, lack of fact-checking makes it all untrustworthy. Fitzmaurice returns to China as consul despite the threats to his family and also becomes prisoner of Japanese. The Kings Royal Surrey regiment never existed.

Crime must be solved beyond reasonable doubt. Supposition, and there is alot of it here, is not proof. It is also handled clumsily; pages and pages of "what could be more likely" -type exposition. The NOVELIST is selective in what he presents. Werner, and therefore the NOVELIST, becomes the hero. Of course.

It is dishonest of this writer to:
1. pass off someone else's (Werner's) work as his own
2. claim status as a historian, analyst, reporter, when he fabricates, and fails to corroborate suppositions, is biased, and cannot get basic facts right in a "factual" account
3. hide behind the "novel" title and yet passes this dross off as "history". Or vice versa.

If you want history, read "Wild Swans" , or the biography of Mao by the same author. try "Empire of the Sun", for autobiography of child caught up in the japanese prison camps. They are all gripping, well written, and the research is there.

The NOVELIST is quoted as wanting this book to be like "In Cold Blood". (Penguin is quoted as saying to the author: "You are no Capote") The proof in those murders was beyond reasonable doubt, hence the trial/verdict. This NOVEL is supposition. There is no resolution. If you want to read about crime, read Capote's "In Cold Blood".

This book is like squeezing a corpse for cash; just cant figure out if it is the father or the daughter who has been screwed the most?

This NOVEL is a DRAMATISATION of a murder that happened in the late 1930s when the Japanese had invaded China, and the Chinese left and right wing factions were fighting each other for control.
If you want history,or even historical atmosphere, do not bother with this book. If you want a murder mystery, look elsewhere.

The NOVELIST (do not be deceived- this man is no historian)has used notes made by the father of the murdered girl, and has based his NOVEL around this. If anyone, it would be the father, that has "solved" the crime, not this NOVELIST. It is audacious and dishonest to claim otherwise.

This NOVEL is cliched and repetative.The expats are described as wasters, drunks, womanisers, "bright young things", "old China hands", "fast set", pompous, stiffupperlip....you name it, it is there... and on each page these people are taking tiffins or propping up bars. This NOVELIST pads out the book by such repetition you wonder if an editor ever went near it.

Clearly the NOVELIST is writing for a screen play, not for history, as why else would he fabricate dialogue, private thoughts, pass off rumour as truth, try and construct a conspiracy theory, and describe scenes he did not see. These parts are not even well written: "who does a dentist's dentistry?". Tiresome and juvenile.

The NOVELIST might find his "research" exhausting, but absence of footnotes, biased sources, omissions, lack of fact-checking makes it all untrustworthy. Crime must be solved beyond reasonable doubt. Supposition, and there is alot of it here, is not proof. It is also handled clumsily; pages and pages of "what could be more likely" -type exposition. The NOVELIST is selective in what he presents. Werner, and therefore the NOVELIST, becomes the hero. Of course.

It is dishonest of this writer to:
1. pass off someone else's work as his own
2. claim status as a historian, analyst, reporter, when he fabricates, and fails to corroborate suppositions, is biased, and cannot get basic facts right
3. hide behind the "novel" title and yet passes this dross off as "history". Or vice versa.

If you want history, read "Wild Swans" , or the biography of Mao by the same author. try "Empire of the Sun", for autobiography of child caught up in the japanese prison camps. They are all gripping, well written, and the research is there.

The NOVELIST is quoted as wanting this book to be like "In Cold Blood". (Penguin is quoted as saying to the author: "You are no Capote") The proof in those murders was beyond reasonable doubt, hence the trial/verdict. This NOVEL is supposition. There is no resolution. If you want to read about crime, read Capote's "In Cold Blood".