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

By Paul French

Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger from the author of City of Devils

Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Release date: Apr 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781101580387

Paul French

PAUL FRENCH was born in London and lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. His book Midnight in Peking was a New York Times Bestseller and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He received the Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction. His book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir received much praise with The Economist writing, ‘…in Mr French the city has its champion storyteller.’ Both Midnight in Peking and City of Devils are currently in development for film.

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PENGUIN BOOKS

Midnight in Peking

Historian Paul French lives in Shanghai, where he is an economist and analyst, frequently commenting on China for the English-speaking press around the world. The author of a number of books on China between the world wars, including Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand and Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao, he studied history, economics and Mandarin at university and has an M.Phil. in economics from the University of Glasgow.

Midnight in Peking

How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

PAUL FRENCH

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PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in Australia by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (Australia) 2011

This revised edition published in Penguin Books 2012

Copyright © Paul French, 2011, 2012

All rights reserved

Map: National Library of Australia (MAP G7824.B4 1936)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

French, Paul, 1966–

Midnight in Peking : how the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of old China / Paul French.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-58038-7

1. Murder—China—Beijing—Case studies. 2. Beijing (China)— History—20th century. I. Title.

HV6535.C43F74 2012

364.152'3092—dc23 2012001874

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Version_2

For the innocent

For Pamela

The north wind came in the night, ice covers the waters:

Once our young sister has gone she will never return

—TRADITIONAL SONG OF THE CANAL PEOPLE OF NORTHERN CHINA

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Doctor Faustus

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness

—JOSEPH CONRAD, Under Western Eyes

Contents

The Approaching Storm

The Body at the Fox Tower

The Police of Peking

Wild Dogs and Diplomats

The Investigation

Pamela

An Old China Hand

Armour Factory Alley

Cocktail Hour at the Wagons Lits

Into the Badlands

Of Rats and Men

Under Peking Earth

A Respectable Man of Influence

Radical Chic

The Element of Fire

The Rising Sun That Chills

Journey to the Underworld

Chuanpan Hutong

The Hunters

Invitation to a Party

The Wound That Wouldn’t Heal

THE WRITING OF MIDNIGHT IN PEKING

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

SOURCES

PHOTOGRAPHS

Dragon Ornament

By day the fox spirits of Peking lie hidden and still. But at night they roam restlessly through the cemeteries and burial grounds of the long dead, exhuming bodies and balancing the skulls upon their heads. They must then bow reverentially to Tou Mu, the Goddess of the North Star, who controls the books of life and death that contain the ancient celestial mysteries of longevity and immortality. If the skulls do not topple and fall, then the fox spirits—or huli jing, —will live for ten centuries and must seek victims to nourish themselves, replenishing their energy through trickery and connivance, preying upon innocent mortals. Having lured their chosen victims, they simply love them to death. They then strike their tails to the ground to produce fire and disappear, leaving only a corpse behind them . . .

The Approaching Storm

Dragon Ornament

The eastern section of old Peking has been dominated since the fifteenth century by a looming watchtower, built as part of the Tartar Wall to protect the city from invaders. Known as the Fox Tower, it was believed to be haunted by fox spirits, a superstition that meant the place was deserted at night.

After dark the area became the preserve of thousands of bats, which lived in the eaves of the Fox Tower and flitted across the moonlight like giant shadows. The only other living presence was the wild dogs, whose howling kept the locals awake. On winter mornings the wind stung exposed hands and eyes, carrying dust from the nearby Gobi Desert. Few people ventured out early at this time of year, opting instead for the warmth of their beds.

But just before dawn on 8 January 1937, rickshaw pullers passing along the top of the Tartar Wall, which was wide enough to walk or cycle on, noticed lantern lights near the base of the Fox Tower, and indistinct figures moving about. With neither the time nor the inclination to stop, they went about their business, heads down, one foot in front of the other, avoiding the fox spirits.

When daylight broke on another freezing day, the tower was deserted once more. The colony of bats circled one last time before the creeping sun sent them back to their eaves. But in the icy wasteland between the road and the tower, the wild dogs—the huang gou—were prowling curiously, sniffing at something alongside a ditch.

It was the body of a young woman, lying at an odd angle and covered by a layer of frost. Her clothing was dishevelled, her body badly mutilated. On her wrist was an expensive watch that had stopped just after midnight.

It was the morning after the Russian Christmas, thirteen days after the Western Christmas by the old Julian calendar.

Peking at that time had a population of some one and a half million, of which only two thousand, perhaps three, were foreigners. They were a disparate group, ranging from stiff-backed consuls and their diplomatic staff to destitute White Russians. The latter, having fled their homeland to escape the Bolsheviks and revolution, were now officially stateless. In between were journalists, a few businessmen, some old China hands who’d lived in Peking since the days of the Qing dynasty and felt they could never leave. There was the odd world traveller taking a prolonged sojourn from a grand tour of the Orient, who’d come for a fortnight and lingered on for years, as well as refugees from the Great Depression in Europe and America, seeking opportunity and adventure. And there was no shortage of foreign criminals, dope fiends and prostitutes who’d somehow washed up in northern China.

Peking’s foreigners clustered in and around a small enclave known as the Legation Quarter, where the great powers of Europe, America and Japan had their embassies and consulates—institutions that were always referred to as legations. Just two square acres in size, the strictly demarcated Legation Quarter was guarded by imposing gates and armed sentries, with signs ordering rickshaw pullers to slow down for inspection as they passed through. Inside was a haven of Western architecture, commerce and entertainment—a profusion of clubs, hotels and bars that could just as easily have been in London, Paris or Washington.

Both the Chinese and foreigners of Peking had been living with chaos and uncertainty for a long time. Ever since the downfall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the city had been at the mercy of one marauding warlord after another. Nominally China was ruled by the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, but the government competed for power with the warlords and their private armies, who controlled swathes of territory as large as western Europe. Peking and most of northern China was a region in flux.

Between 1916 and 1928 alone, no fewer than seven warlord rulers came and went in Peking. On conquering the city, each sought to outdo the last, with more elaborate uniforms, more ermine and braid. All fancied themselves emperors, founders of new dynasties, and all commanded substantial private armies. One of them, Cao Kun, had bribed his way to supremacy, paying officials large amounts in stolen silver dollars, since no official in China at that time trusted paper money. Another, Feng Kuo-chang, had been a violin player in brothels before illegally declaring himself president of all China. They and their ilk terrorised the city as they bled it dry.

Peking was certainly a prize. It was China’s richest city after Shanghai and Tientsin. Unlike those two, however, Peking was not a treaty port—those places seized from the Qing dynasty by European powers in the nineteenth century. There foreigners governed themselves, and built trading empires backed by their own police forces, armies and navies. Peking was, at least for now, Chinese territory.

But it was no longer the capital, and had not been since 1927. In that year, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, unable to pacify the northern warlords and struggling to cement his fragile leadership of the Kuomintang, had moved the seat of government to Nanking, some seven hundred miles south. From there he launched the Northern Expedition, a military campaign that attempted to wipe out both the warlords and the nascent but troublesome Communist Party, and unite China under his rule. He was only partially successful. Peking was run by the Hopei-Chahar Political Council, led by General Sung Cheh-yuan, commander of the Kuomintang’s Twenty-Ninth Route Army. General Sung, who had a formidable reputation for soldiering, remained loyal to the Nanking government even after the arrival of a new player in the struggle to control China: Japan.

In 1931, under the guise of their long-dreamt-of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, in China’s northeast. They then set about bolstering the region with troops in preparation for an advance south to capture the whole country. But there were constant skirmishes with Chinese peasants, who were resisting the theft of their lands. Even farther north, Japanese agents provocateurs were stirring up anti-Chinese feeling in Mongolia.

General Sung paid lip service to the Japanese while resisting their demands to cede the city, but his council was too weak and corrupt to stave off the encroachment of enemy troops. These steadily encircled Peking, and by the start of 1937 had established their base camp a matter of miles from the Forbidden City. Acts of provocation occurred daily, and the roads and train lines into and out of the city were disrupted. Japanese thugs for hire, known as ronin, openly brought opium and heroin into Peking through Manchuria. This was done with Tokyo’s connivance and was part of an effort to sap Peking’s will to fight. The ronin, their agents and Korean collaborators peddled the subsidized narcotics in Peking’s Badlands, a cluster of dive bars, brothels and opium dens a stone’s throw from the base of the foreign powers in the Legation Quarter.

Whatever the ferocity of the storm building outside—in Chinese Peking, in the Japanese-occupied north, across China and its 400 million people to the south—the privileged foreigners in the Legation Quarter sought to maintain their European face at all costs. Officially, Chinese could not take up residence in the Quarter, although in 1911 many rich eunuchs—former servants to the emperors and empresses who had been thrown out of the Forbidden City after the collapse of the Qing dynasty—had moved in. They were followed by warlords in the 1920s.

More than a few foreign residents of the Legation Quarter in its heyday described themselves as inmates, but if this gated and guarded section was indeed a cage, then it was a gilded one, with endless games of bridge to pass the time. Sandwiched between the legations were exclusive clubs, grand hotels and department stores. There was a French post office, and the great buildings of the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Banque de l’Indochine, the Russo-Asiatic Bank, and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

It was Europe in miniature, with European road names and electric streetlights. St Michael’s Catholic Church dominated the corner of rue Marco Polo and Legation Street, and the latter was also home to the German hospital, where the nurses, Lazarene nuns, served kaffee und kuchen to their privileged patients. Residents of European-style apartment buildings went shopping at Kierulff’s general store, which sold perfume, canned foods and coffee. Sennet Frères had a reputation as the best jewelers in northern China, and Hartung’s was the leading photography studio and the first to have been established in Peking, while a Frenchman ran a bookshop and another a bakery. On Morrison Street (named after George Morrison—‘Morrison of Peking,’ the thundering voice of the Times of London in China) there was an English tailor and an Italian who sold wine and confectionery. White Russian beauticians staffed La Violette, the quarter’s premier beauty parlour. There was also a foreign police force, and garrisons for the five hundred or so foreign troops stationed in Peking.

Eight gateways, each with massive iron gates, marked the entrances to the Quarter and were manned by armed guards day and night. Chinese needed a special pass or a letter of introduction to enter this inner sanctum. Rickshaw pullers had their license numbers taken and had to leave immediately after they’d dropped off their fare. At the first sign of trouble in Chinese Peking, the gates to the Quarter were slammed shut—there would be no repeat of the deadly siege that had occurred during the Boxer uprising.

The memory of the Boxers still loomed large over the Legation Quarter. In 1900 the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, dubbed the Boxers, had swarmed down on the Quarter, intending to massacre all the yang guizi—foreign devils—in the capital, and show that China could fight back against Western encroachment and gunships. They had already beheaded missionaries working in remote outposts, and as they approached Peking, their numbers swelled, thanks in part to the rumours that they possessed magical fighting skills, and that bullets could not harm them.

The Boxers held the foreign community under siege within the Legation Quarter for fifty-five days. They lit fires around the outskirts, fired cannons into the legations and tried to starve the inhabitants into submission. Eventually the siege was lifted by a joint force of eight foreign armies, including those of Britain, America and Japan. After liberating the Quarter, these troops went on a horrific looting spree, rampaging throughout the city, terrorizing all Peking. With seized Chinese money, the Quarter was rebuilt grander than ever and was now far better protected.

Whereas to most Chinese the Quarter was a second Forbidden City, to the foreigners living there in the 1930s it was a sanctuary, even if in their claustrophobic confines they sometimes felt, as one visiting journalist remarked, like ‘fish in an aquarium,’ going ‘round and round . . . serene and glassy-eyed.’

Rumour was the currency of the quarter. Conversations that started with who had the best chef and who was about to depart for home on a long-awaited furlough soon degenerated into who had commenced an affair with whom at the races, whose wife was a little too close to a guardsman at the legation. Sometimes darker things were hinted at, things beyond the normal indiscretions. Some people lost their moral compass in the East, or so the thinking went.

And there were plenty of places to spread rumours. The exclusive clubs and bars were hotbeds of intrigue and gossip. In the stuffy and very British Peking Club, it was black tie only. Whisky sodas were dispensed on trays by silent servants, the cacophony outside in Chinese Peking held at bay by windows covered with thick velvet curtains, and there were two-month-old copies of the Times and the Pall Mall Gazette on offer. In the swanky bar of the Grand Hôtel de Pékin, a respectable crowd sipped fancy drinks and twirled to an all-Italian band playing waltzes.

The more risqué Hôtel du Nord, on the edge of the Badlands, had a crowded bar that served draught beer, fashionable Horse’s Neck cocktails and dry gin martinis. Here the patrons were more rambunctious—the polite word was ‘mixed’—and they foxtrotted to jazz courtesy of a band of White Russians. And then there was the Grand Hôtel des Wagons Lits.

The Wagons Lits was a large, French-style hotel just inside the Quarter at the junction of Legation and Canal streets. Close to the city’s main railway station, it was a popular meeting spot. The bar was famous for its diplomatic clientele during the day and bright young things later at night. A sprinkling of connected Chinese sometimes joined the crowd, as did the children of wealthy local businessmen who’d just returned from Paris or London. The Wagons Lits had always been a place to loosen tongues. There were tables to be had away from the dance floor, away from the band that strummed lightly for the mix of guests. This was the spot to meet the knowledgeable and opinionated old China hands.

But lately the once-packed hotels and clubs had been a little somber, and sometimes they were half empty. In truth, the Wagons Lits and other night spots were out of date. Shanghai had better bars, had much better everything. Peking was a relic, a onetime capital that was now far too close to the Japanese war machine. The city, its foreigners and their clubs were victims of history and geography.

These days, rickshaw pullers waited outside the exclusive Peking Club for well-heeled guests who never emerged, having never arrived. The diplomats and the old China hands stayed on, sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that both the Nationalist republic and the Japanese would go away, but the legations operated with reduced staff. Those foreigners who could were getting out: businessmen sent their wives and children home, or to the relative calm of Tientsin or Shanghai. Wealthy Chinese had their families go south to Canton or the British colony of Hong Kong. Peking was already lost ground; it was just that the Japanese hadn’t got around to taking it yet.

To make matters worse, rumour had it that Chiang Kai-shek was about to cut a deal with Tokyo. Chiang had fought a long and bitter internecine battle to become leader of the Kuomintang, and his position was still precarious; he had political challengers to stave off as well as the Japanese, the warlords and the Communists. Many people believed he would sacrifice Peking in order to save his own skin: if the Japanese were to stop at the Yangtze River and leave him everything south as far as Hong Kong, Chiang could live with that. Chiang was finished with the north, the Chinese whispered—for you never knew who was listening—he would sell out Peking, and the Japs would massacre them all.

The city’s inhabitants felt betrayed, expendable. The mood on the streets, of both foreign and Chinese Peking—in the crowded hutong (alleyways), in the teeming markets where prices were rising and supplies of essentials were dwindling—was one of fear mixed with resignation. People said that when the final push to conquer China came, the Japanese would starve the city into submission. The end was coming; it was just a question of when. The traditional trade routes into Peking from China’s vast hinterlands were already being cut off. Chinese Peking was bursting with peasants who had crowded in from the surrounding provinces, fleeing the Japanese, the warlords, poverty and natural disasters. They wandered aimlessly, wondering what tomorrow would bring. They went to bed early in crammed houses to escape the dark and the biting cold, hoping to make it through another day.

When the catastrophe did finally hit, China would be thrown into a struggle for its very survival, in what would be the opening act of World War II. For now foreign Peking was in an uneasy lull, on the edge of panic at times, although an alcohol-assisted denial and the strength of the silver dollar made life more bearable for many. An American or a European could still live like a king in this city, with a life of servants, golf, races, champagne-fuelled weekend retreats in the Western Hills. The storm might be coming, but the last foreigners in Peking had battened down the hatches very comfortably.

The hunt for a young woman’s killer was about to consume, and in some ways define, the cold and final days of old Peking.

The Body at the Fox Tower

Dragon Ornament

It was an old man named Chang Pao-chen who reported the body. One of the laobaixing—literally, the ‘old hundred names,’ the working people of Peking—Chang was now retired and lived in a hutong not far from the Fox Tower. On that cold morning of Friday 8 January, he was taking his prized songbird for a walk along the Tartar Wall.

Caged songbirds were an ancient Peking tradition, and every morning old men like Chang could be seen carrying lacquered wooden cages draped with blue linen covers. All Pekingers, Chinese and foreign, recognized the distinctive sound of these swallows, which were let out of their cages with flutes attached to their tails to go whistling through the morning air, soaring across the Forbidden City and the Fox Tower before faithfully returning to their masters. Chang came to the Tartar Wall every day to smoke, drink tea and talk songbirds. The cold didn’t deter him, nor the strong, bone-chilling winds. He was a Pekinger born and bred.

That morning, shortly after eight o’clock, he was following the Tartar Wall eastwards to the Fox Tower when he noticed two rickshaw pullers squatting below, pointing across the wasteland towards the rubbish-strewn moat at the base of the tower. The area was invariably quiet at that hour, and whatever was down there couldn’t be seen by the traffic using the City Road, which ran parallel to the wall from the Fox Tower down to the Ch’ienmen Gate.

Chang drew closer, wary of the huang gou, but while the scabrous mutts had a fearsome reputation, the old man knew they rarely attacked humans. Like many a poor Pekinger, the dogs were hungry, homeless and desperate, as Tokyo increasingly choked off food supplies and commerce.

Later, what Chang saw was disputed as the local rumour mill swung into action, exaggerating the scene with each telling and retelling. But there was no doubting that the woman he found at the base of the Fox Tower was dead, and not just any woman, but a foreigner. A laowai. Moreover she had been terribly mutilated. Even in the early-morning half-light Chang could see that the woman’s body had been badly beaten. He could see cut marks on her pale, bare legs; her face appeared to have been stabbed repeatedly.

Old Chang was shocked, even though dead bodies in the open weren’t rare that winter. Poverty was one cause, but suicide had become almost an epidemic, with slashed wrists or opium the most common routes. Every daybreak the city sent out carts to collect frozen corpses.

There’d also been a rise in politically motivated murders. The Kuomintang’s enforcers and secret police clashed with turncoat Chinese, those who believed that Tokyo would inevitably crush Nanking as well as Peking, and were keen to be in a position to profit early from the occupation. There were also shootouts between rival factions, and outrages committed by Japanese ronin and their Korean allies from the north.

Old Chang hadn’t come across such a corpse personally. As a younger man he’d seen the city ravaged and looted by the foreign armies that had come to rout the Boxer rebels, and then, in the 1920s, he’d seen the heads of warlords’ victims on display. Now there was another war of sorts under way in Peking, between the Nationalists, the Communists and the Japanese

Reviews for Midnight in Peking

[mysterymax_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very complete and factual crime story, written so compellingly you think you are reading a really good police procedural/mystery. (Especially as I was not aware of this crime and so had no idea of the who/why/etc.) There are tons of reviews for this book, I will just say that it is the story of the murder of a 20 year old British woman in Peking, China in 1937. Very well done.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well written and interesting. A compelling read. I admire the author's dedication to telling this story and his efforts at research to do such a fine job. The way he put the story together makes it read like a murder mystery, not just a retelling of the facts.

[usuallee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really fascinating book, equal parts history and true crime. The author vividly evokes a pungent atmosphere of multicultural pre-war Peking with terse, hardboiled, film noir-esque language. The murder mystery was never officially solved, but the conclusion drawn seems plausible. This won awards; I don;t have a problem with that. Really well written.

[zhoud2005 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating recount of a gruesome crime in old Peking.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Midnight in Peking. How the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of Old China and The badlands. Decadent playground of Old Peking are two closely related books, authored by Paul French, the editor of the in-house publication series of the Royal Asiatic Society. The badlands. Decadent playground of Old Peking is a small booklet that describes the seedy area of gambling houses, cabarets, brothels and opium dens directly to the east of the Legation Quarter in Beijing during the 1920s -- 1930s. This area is the setting of the drama in Midnight in Peking. How the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of Old China.

For a long time, foreigners had the position, almost as untouchables, but also in a sense of neglect. The Chinese mainly tend to see the foreign presence as a pollution, and tend to ignore it as well as they can. During the late years of the Qing dynasty diplomats lived in the Legation Quarter, and a relatively small number of foreigners lived in other parts of the city, notably George Ernest Morrison who lived in Wangfujing Street, then called Morrison Street, Sir Edmund Backhouse and Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, tutor of Puyi. These people were sinologists and newspapermen. A more colourful riff-raff of Russians and other foreigners resided in the seedy quarter known as the badlands north of the Hadamen Gate. It was in this area that the young Pamela Werner, daughter of a sinologist and diplomat, looked for adventure and met with a gruesome death.

Midnight in Peking. How the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted the last days of Old China describes the events and points at the most likely culprit at whose hands Pamela met with her death. It is a chilling story, which French pieced together from the archive of Pamela's father and circumstantial other evidence. The book is written in the style of a detective story, but still sufficiently factual to pass as a hybrid between scholarly work and popular science.

[thebookjunky · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

All the traditional elements of a great murder mystery are here: exotic locale in 1930s Peking, West vs East, a dead young woman who was a bit of a rebel, corrupt or ineffective police, cover-ups, an obsessive father, seamy underbelly of Peking populated by thugs, slimy rich guys, pimps and working girls. A story that could easily have been shifted overseas and written up as fiction by Ian Rankin. ARC from Penguin via Goodreads giveaway.

[etxgardener · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've read good things about Paul French's books and looked forward to reading this one - a true story of the murder of a young woman in Peking in 1935, the bungled official police investigation and how her determined father finally solved the crime. This story has everything: sex, drugs, alcohol,corrupt politicians and decadent colonial residents, so it should have been a rip-roaring read. Yet somehow it wasn't.

French has investigated all the facts, but he tells his story in a clinical passionless manner that I never truly got caught up in what should have been a truly riveting story. Maybe this should story would have been better done in the hands of Erik Larsen.

[ladycato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

French pieces together the events of a murder that scandalized Peking on the brink of a full Japanese invasion. Pamela Werner was days away from turning twenty when her body was found at the base of the Fox Tower. Her father, a disgraced and eccentric British man, looked to the joint investigation of Chinese and British officials to bring justice to his only child's death. However, those officials are undermined by various governments and internal political issues and no conclusion was reached. Her heart-broken father continued his own investigation, even after the Japanese took over the city.

French created a masterful work. Not only does he recreate Pamela as a bright young lady who simply wanted to go skating with friends, but he also makes Peking a character in its own right. It was a city devastated several times over through the 19th century, and then on the verge of new turmoil, the international quarter continued its decadent ways. It was refuge for White Russians and European Jews and so many struggling Chinese from the countryside. Japanese soldiers and spies were already in the city, though they had not formally occupied it. Everyone knew that was coming. Pamela's death occurred at a terrible time--as if there is any choice time to be murdered--and would have been utterly forgotten if not for French's book. I can see why this won the Edgar Award.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

January, 1937. Peking was on the verge of invasion by the Japanese; China was on the verge of a Communist revolution; the world was on the verge of war. One 19-year-old Englishwoman was found dead not far from her home, her corpse mutilated, and the joint investigation of Chinese police and a representative of the British legation began. The murder was never solved, but author Paul French brings forward little-known archives to point the way towards the killers.

This is my first foray into true crime, a genre I do not have a natural bent towards as I am completely wimpy when it comes to violence. And while most of this book focuses on the investigation and events after the murder, what happened to Pamela Werner was truly horrible, the description of her body after death pulls no punches. There is, however, quite a lot of food for thought - foreigners living in China, the sordid underbelly of a city that no one wanted to talk about, Chinese and British working together (or not) to solve a murder - which makes it an interesting nonfiction choice for a book group.

[macart3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic is all I can say! In the middle of it I read the ending, but I still wanted to read the rest of it. Paul French writes in such a clear, concise way that it's almost as if I'm reading a thriller. He doesn't go too much into the historical background, but enough for you know that there are tensions between the factions within the city. I highly recommend it!

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On the eve of Japanese occupation of Beijing (Peking), a young English girl is found brutally murdered, a crime that officially remains unsolved.

Paul French presents the facts of this horrific murder against the backdrop of daily life in Peking, where mixed in with the Chinese live White Russians, Jews fleeing Europe, the diplomatic staff from various Western countries, and China hands, ex-pats who have lived in China for years. (The father of murdered Pamela Werner is one of these old hands.) French describes a city with where opium dens and brothels nestle up against the homes of the wealthy westerners, where the locals fear fox spirits and everyone anxiously anticipates the arrival of Japanese forces. If you are at all interested in China or Chinese history, this book is rich with details.

French presents the facts of the murder and its investigation in a clinical way, and offers a plausible solution. However, when he portrays the people involved in the case, the narration falls flat. They never became much more than two-dimensional to me. The details about Peking were what kept me reading, not the details of the crime. It's also a confusing case, with many suspects, lots of movement throughout the night of the murder, and several important clues. It would have been helpful if French had supplied some explanatory materials, such as a map of the area and a list of all the people involved and their relationships to one another.

Despite these flaws, this was still a highly readable book with much to interest those of us who are fascinated by China.

I read this for the 2014 GeoCAT challenge (East Asia).

[y2ash · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm really glad I've joined my non fiction book clubs because, with the exception of one, all of the selections have been delightful. Paul French's Midnight in Peking is no different. It tells the story of Pamela Werner, a 20 year old Englishwoman who was brutally murdered on the night of the Russian Christmas in 1937 in Peking.

When I say brutally murdered, there is definite emphasis on the term "brutally." Besides from the fact that Pamela's clothes were torn, her body was drained of its blood and her organs were removed including her heart, her bladder, one of her kidneys, and her liver.

The surgical brutality of the crime and because Pamela's father was Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner, a scholar and a former British consul who had lived in China since the 1880s a partnership was formed between Chinese detective Colonel Han Shih-ching and British detective Richard Dennis. This was certainly a high profile case: a young white woman was killed in China and each government wanted all their bases covered.

What French does beautifully is that he paints the world of Peking, China so very well. From the fox spirits legend to the paranoia the Chinese were experiencing from the different regimes changing hands every other week and the looming threat of Japanese occupation. Then, there are the things that hindered the murder case such as the British bureaucracy to the various codes of silence eminating from the very rich to the very poor, from the morally sound to the morally corrupt.

Parts of Peking, such as the British Legation, were very good but Peking was filled with various opium dens, brothels, and dangerous people who were petty, invincible, and knew how to prey on the weak. Midnight in Peking is heartbreaking tale but it shows that, despite the debauchery and economic turmoil, a father will do anything to find out who killed his only child.

[mlbowers-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book ultimately left me flat. I really enjoyed the history about the region during this time. I am always amazed at how much is not commonly understood about things that are not really that old. I also enjoyed the middle of the book which was more of a detective story. From there the story kind of wandered, as it was set up as a detective story and then the detectives left. I realize that this was based on real events, so the author was obligated to tell these events as they occurred, however the shift in storytelling was unsatisfying. I am still very glad that I read this. This is a time and place that I knew very little about and this was very enlightening.

[werner_compiler · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I had hopes for this book given the PR, but was really disappointed by the prose (repetative: dive bars; brothels, tiffin, everyone was seething or stiff/straight-backed) and the pacing of the book was as uneven as a Kenyan road post-flood.

The idea of solving a murder is cute, but no evidence in the sources given (most are incorrect btw) exists.
Meanwhile the author condemns the memory of many men, when in reality, the father was 'morbidly suspicious' and 'completely mad'.

If I may, I'd like to share a link so other readers can see the archive material omitted by the author/book. If it was fiction, this wouldnt matter, but it is sold as 100% accurate, which is a little far from the mark IMHO.

pamelawernermurderpeking dot com

Lots of interesting archive material about the period and a rather telling section listing the book's "sources in detail".

[kraaivrouw · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Midnight in Peking is not your average supermarket/drugstore true crime novel filled with lurid pictures and speculation. This is true crime as vehicle for social history, much like the books TJ English writes so wonderfully well. In the opening of the book, a young woman's body is discovered - she is brutally, terribly, shockingly dead - the victim of unspeakable crime. She is also British. China is hounded by the Japanese, the world is on the brink of its second World War (or World War I - part II, as I like to describe the inevitable sequel), and the story makes headlines.

Mr. French introduces us to the China of the period, but also offers insight into investigative techniques of the time, the way foreigners in Peking fit into the city (in their own quarters and without), the nature of diplomatic face saving, and a tantalizing glimpse in the Badlands - that sinful place of crime and debauchery. He details the official investigation (where the crime went cold) and the unofficial investigation run by the victim's father (where the crime was solved). Along the way were diplomats, Chinese students, European wastrels, prostitutes, pimps, petty thieves, rooming house denizens, and everything in-between.

Midnight in Peking is a glimpse under the covers of Peking on its way to radical change as the friction between the old and new rub its edges raw. Ostensibly about the murder of Pamela Werner and her father's fight to find justice for her, the book is at its best where it lingers on the fringes of polite society - jazz, brothels, and opium dens, oh my. I would have liked more social history and less true crime, but overall an enjoyable read and winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger.

[bookwoman247 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I normally don't read true crime, but this intrigued me. The story of a young girl's murder amidst the dark, teeming underworld of 1937 Peking was riveting.

French did an excellent job setting the historical background.

[a_reader_of_fictions · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've never read any true crime book before, I don't think, although given my memory I could be forgetting. Anyway, I was willing to give it a shot. Although I do not think true crime will be my new genre of choice, I definitely do not walk away from Midnight in Peking with a bad opinion of the genre.

From what I understand, which is very little, true crime can go one of two ways: very historical and fact-driven or very fictional and sensational. This is based solely on the covers I've seen and perhaps reviews. The genre seems to straddle the boundary between history and fiction, which is part of why I've avoided it up to now, because I've not been sure precisely what it entails. Whether my assumptions were correct or not, I can say with assurance that Midnight in Peking is definitely a true crime history. French clearly did a lot of research and the book reads like anything I would have read for my history major in school.

Having looked at some reviews of the book prior to writing this one, I know that some people had trouble with the level of detail in the book. I both liked and didn't like that. I don't know much of anything about China during that time period, so learning about it was fascinating, but it didn't always seem to add into Pamela's story particularly. So, I guess, I just want to say that you'll likely enjoy this more if you go into it expecting it to be about the last days of old China, with Pamela's brutal murder serving as a lens through which to view the situation.

Pamela's story is certainly an interesting and, as a woman, completely terrifying one. To be a little bit morbid, I really hope that, should I ever be murdered for some reason, that the killer comes to justice. It may not matter to me, what with the being dead and all, but I feel like I would feel better. The things that people do to women are simply horrifying. Also, the fact that they really should have caught her killer, but that the cops didn't do their jobs...NOT COOL.

Whether French has the correct analysis and killer is unclear, even he openly admits that. His solution does make sense and he's done his research. I greatly appreciated that he pointed out in a section at the end, "The Writing of Midnight in Peking" which parts he wrote entirely on his own, which he got from other investigators, what research he did and how everything could still be different The fact that he's open with the limitations of his research makes me more trusting of his results.

History, mystery and true crimes will likely enjoy Midnight in Peking even more than I did. To that end, I am offering up my copy to one reader. Simply fill out the Rafflecopter below. There's no need to follow my blog, but that's always appreciated. Good luck!

[literaryrunner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This non-fiction book reads more like a novel of suspense. It opens in 1937 Peking: the Japanese are about to take over the city and an upper echelon European ex-pats' daughter is brutally murdered. The Peking police and the English commissioner are both holding back on the investigation and eventually give it up. The girl's father is determined to find the killer, knowing it was probably the American dentist and his sadistic friends who are responsible. Tracking down the clues while a World War is beginning to brew is a formidable task. I thoroughly enjoyed following the final solution to the crime.

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent description of pre revolution Peking and its small group of expats. The horrifying murder of the schoolgirl Pamela Werner, who seems to have been singularly unfortunate throughout her short life, is diligently investigated by the Chinese Detective Han, and the British Inspector Dennis. But both are constrained by their superiors anxious to move on. So the case remains unsolved - but for the investigations of Pamela's eccentric academic father Prof E.T.C Warner.

Paul French has uncovered Prof Werner's notes and created a gripping, enthralling and importantly non judgemental narrative of Peking in the dog days of the Nationalist government with the Japanese everywhere and fear rampant. The various communities, particularly the wretched displaced White Russians, are vividly and convincingly brought to life as are the secrets and scandals of the little expat enclave. French even comes to a confident conclusion (supporting Prof Werner's conclusion) as to who murdered Pamela and how. For me its not a particularly convincing conclusion - whilst possible, there are quite a few holes in it for me, for reasons impossible to go into here without giving the ending away

But its still an excellent narrative of a forgotten time in history. Recommended

[tangledthread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Midnight in Peking is a true-crime story based in Peking in 1937-38 during the impending Japanese occupation. A young British woman is brutally murdered and found at the base of the Fox tower in Peking on the morning after Russian Christmas, 1937. The victim, Pamela Werner, is the adopted daughter of a former British consul who lives outside the gates of the British legation and is a noted sinologist, university lecturer.

The murder investigation is carried out by Han, a Chinese police detective, and the British liaison Inspector Dennis of Scotland Yard. The two detectives are unable to establish a motive for the murder and both are severely constrained by their superiors. Rumors, lies and obfuscation thwart the investigation and the case is abandoned as prewar tensions mount.

Her father, E. T. C. Werner, hires his own investigators and uncovers what the detectives could not, or would not. He makes repeated attempts to obtain justice through the English bureaucratic hierarchy and is repeatedly thwarted. Following a lead from a footnote about Pamela's death in Edgar Snow's book Red Star Over China, Paul French tracks down E. T. C. Warner's investigative reports and provides the belated justice to the memory of Pamela that the British bureaucracy denied her and her father.

The author does a thorough job of laying out the expatriate community in Peking including white Russians who fled the Bolshevik Revolution twenty years earlier, the European community, and some North Americans. The tensions between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist party and Mao Tse Tung's Communist party are also covered. Though some may find this information tedious, it is information not well covered in general western education and is important to understanding the time and place of the murder.

[seasidereader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This well-constructed narrative will appeal to true crime fans. Spoiler alert -- it was very disappointing that the victim's father seemed be a poster child for "..doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." He had the means at his disposal to effect, if not justice, at least a sort of retribution.

[missreadstoomuch · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A thorough investigative work of nonfiction looking into a horrific murder that occurred in Peking China during a very interesting period of history - it just seems like it would have been a better New Yorker article or series. There was so much extraneous information that it had me searching to follow the murder investigation thread.

[billpilgrim_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of a young British woman who is murdered in Peking just before the start of World War 2. This book works both for the historical crime story that it tells and for its description of life in China at that time, particularly that of the foreigners who were there in diplomatic, business or other capacities.

[rebeccagraf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

How much of history is a blurb in a book or document and never investigated further? How much history gets lost that would actually open the doors of the past up further? Paul French explores this through his book, Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China.

This is the story of Pamela Werner who goes out skating with friends only to be found in the wee hours of them morning as a dismembered corpse. The investigation into her death becomes complicated. Doubts arise as to who is telling the truth with the many cultures involved. The past of everyone comes out and begins to make the already murky waters even muddier. It becomes the story of the investigation and all the parties involved in the crime. This makes it a very intricate story that will keep the reader hooked to the very last page.

The book starts off as a fiction book, or at least that is I was reading it. It was only after most see the case as unsolvable that the tone switches to more of a non-fiction investigative piece. There are several graphic scenes as the state of the body is described and can be unsettling for anyone with weak stomachs. I was borderline sick reading it though it could have been from the fact that some human actually carried out such an act.

The various cultures are explored which adds a very interesting depth to this book. I am very ignorant of Asian history so the presence of these cultures was a surprise. Involved in the investigation of Miss Werner are native Chinese, British subjects, Americans, and Russians. Each play a part in the history of the period and the murder.

This is a very good book. It sparked a deeper interest in this period of history for me and a desire to learn more. If you enjoy history and mystery, I think this is a book you will enjoy. Once again, there are scenes that are rather gruesome.

I reviewed an advance kindle copy that contained formatting issues. These should have been resolved in the final copy. Even with these issues, the read was not affected.

Make this one of your summer reads. You won’t regret it.

Note: This book was provided to me by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

[readyreader_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well reseached and intriguing story of Pamela Werner's murder in Peking, China, during its pre-communist era. Not only is the book a fascinating mystery story but a testimonial to the culture and lifestyle of Peking in the days prior to the Japanese invasion and later on to the beginning of China under Mao Tse Tung.

[shayrp76 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Peking China in 1937 was in turmoil. Opium dens, prostitution, and superstitions were just the everyday concerns. The bigger reality was that the Japanese were gearing up to barge into the city and the citizens were on alert. The murder of Pamela Werner could not have come at a worse time. With very few clues and reluctant witnesses a Chinese and a British detective have very little time to solve the gruesome murder.
I immediately became captivated by Pamela Werner’s story and was invested in learning the conclusion. All of the little details that went into explaining the problems surrounding those who lived in the city and all of the politics that went into suppressing evidence from investigators gave me insight into the frustration of Pamela’s case. The author worked hard to tell Pamela Werner’s story and it shows. It flowed well and never felt overwhelming leaving me with an interest in learning more about the history of that time and place. I recommend this to anyone, especially to those who enjoy true crime.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Legation quarter in Peking, where many foreigner live a rather privileged existence, though things are changing as the Japanese are gaining more power and control over the region. A young British girl's body is found and things quickly become even more serious. Well written book, imparting much history of this region and the politics of the time period. Rapid changes, many different factions trying to gain control in China. Interesting read.

[faradaydon_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent research and storytelling skills

[katroo_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. Not only is it an absorbing account of a murder mystery but the author paints an evocative picture of colonial life in 1930's Beijing. I was shocked and saddened by the details of the murder and the probable solution, all the more so for it being a true story. I was inspired to check newspaper accounts of the time to see what had been reported. I also followed the author's suggestions as to further reading as I became quite entranced by the whole subject. One new trend, which I like, is that of the publisher setting up a whole website to sell the book. Thus, Penguin have a 'Murder in Peking' website that has video interviews with the author, maps and other resources relating to the book. I would urge anyone who has the slightest interest in China, the 1930's or true crime to give this book a go.