Death of a Red Heroine is the first in the Inspector Chen series by Qiu Xiaolong. I read the first few titles in this series back in “real paper book” days, and really liked them. Heroine is on sale in the US for $1.99, and not too badly priced at £2.99 in the UK. HOWEVER, be forewarned that the rest of the series hovers around $7.99 to $11.99 in the US, and titles only very rarely go on sale. So if you want to read the rest of the series in e-book, you’ll either need to be very patient (I’ll post them here when I see them on sale), or cross your fingers that you can find them at your library. Or, of course, spend a lot of money 🙁
The series is a little more reasonably priced in the UK, with several books at £3.99 and £4.99, and one, Hold Your Breath, China, is actually on sale for £1.99 right now (and discountable at Kobo).
Death of a Red Heroine (#1): Kindle US | Kobo US | Kindle UK | Kobo UK
A discussion of this series with someone on one of the e-book forums (MobileRead) I follow reminded me of one of my favorite memories from one of the early books (can’t remember which one). This was a scene with a Mandarin and a Cantonese speaker “talking” – except that they had to do it in writing, because the written characters are so similar (identical?), but the pronunciations are very different. And then, a few months after reading this, I was on a business trip in Hong Kong, and I saw this very thing happen at a ticket booth in the subway – the ticket seller pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and the two people were writing to communicate. And I wouldn’t have understood what was going on without having read the book. It’s always super cool when background comes to life like that!