The Chinese Maze Murders by Robert van Gulik

Professor Uhlenbeck taught him Sanskrit and Russian and conferred him co-authorship of two language reference works on English and Blackfoot, a tribe of North American Algonquian Indians. Uhlenbeck, the pre-eminent linguist at the time.

While still in grammar school, an enterprising young RvG made an all-important connection with the newly retired Professor C.C. He raised gibbons, and he was an avid collector of objects regardless of their price or condition: he collected them for their historical, cultural, or scientific value. In Malaya, he teamed up with a Chinese printer to produce the first books from his New Judge Dee Mysteries series.

In his younger days, the staging of Javanese shadow plays (wayang) brought him great joy. He loved framing Chinese pictorial art and calligraphy scrolls. Yet, he was different from these literati unlike them, RvG did not mind getting his hands dirty. The book contains a postscript by the author on the Chinese Imperial Justice system (something that Van Gulik was an expert on).The four academic and artistic accomplishments of a traditional Chinese scholar-official are painting, poetry or calligraphy, weiqi (the game of go in Japan), and qin (musicologically closest to zither but culturally to lute), and these are the lifelong pursuits of Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) who, at the time of his death, was the Dutch ambassador to Japan and Korea.

The three mysteries: 'The Case of the Sealed Room', 'The Case of the Hidden Testament', and 'The Case of the Girl with the Severed Head' are all based on actual Chinese murder casebooks. (See Forward to Chinese Maze Murders pgs. Finally Van Gulik published the English-language version in 1956. Then the author translated the book into Chinese himself and it was published by the Nanyang Press in Singapore in 1953. The author, having written the story in English, had it translated by a Japanese friend (Professor Ogaeri Yukio) into Japanese and it was sold in Japan under the title 'Meiro-no-satsujin' in 1951. It was based on three actual cases from Chinese criminal investigations. This was the first of the fictional mystery stories written by Robert van Gulik. However, van Gulik's novel is set not in the Tang, but in the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), society and customs depicted in the book reflect this period. It is a fiction based on the real character of Judge Dee (Ti Jen-chieh or Di Renjie - chin: 狄仁傑), a magistrate and statesman of the Tang court, who lived roughly 630–700. The Chinese Maze Murders is a gong'an historical mystery novel written by Robert van Gulik and set in Imperial China.

The Chinese Maze Murders by Robert van Gulik