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AmySea

AmySea

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Ride a Pale Horse
Helen MacInnes
The Samurai's Wife
Laura Joh Rowland
Judge Dee at Work: Eight Chinese Detective Stories - Robert van Gulik I've read most of the books in the Judge Dee series, and this is the first time that I've realized that Sherlock Holmes has absolutely nothing on Judge Dee! In fact, if you were to put both of these men on a case, I'd bet on Judge Dee solving it first, less arrogantly, and more neatly than Holmes.

Truth be told, however, I'm not really a big fan of short stories, and Judge Dee at Work is a collection of short mystery stories full of very subtle clues that are collected and pieced together by our brilliant and perceptive Judge Dee. I loved some of the stories in this collection (He Came With the Rain, The Murder on the Lotus Pond, The Wrong Sword, and Murder on New Year's Eve), but in the end these are still short stories, and as such, are more likely to be forgotten by me. As it turns out, in fact, they were forgotten by me. Well into the third story I began to suspect that I'd read this book before, and by the sixth story I was sure of it. In the end I guess I'd classify Judge Dee at Work as quite good, but forgettable. I just much prefer the Judge Dee novels to these neatly done short stories.