{"id":8070,"date":"2019-07-15T06:32:18","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T10:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8070"},"modified":"2019-07-15T06:37:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T10:37:16","slug":"no-way-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8070","title":{"rendered":"****No Way to Die"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"ancient<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By PA De Voe \u2013 If you want a total escape from Brexit or US\nor European politics, PA De Voe\u2019s second-in-series Ming Dynasty Mystery, No Way to Die<\/em>, will take you back to\nlate 1300s China. As a devoted fan of the Judge Dee mysteries of Robert\nvan Gulik<\/a>, set six hundred years earlier in the Tang Dynasty, I was\ndelighted to find De Voe\u2019s well-crafted series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prose is deceptively simple. No lengthy descriptions,\njust enough information to let you picture the scene\u2014a style in keeping with\nboth the era in which the stories are set and the heavily verb-dependent\nChinese language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women\u2019s doctor (and woman doctor) Xiang-hua is asked to\nserve as coroner to determine whether the mangled body of a stranger found in\nthe village herbalist\u2019s pig pen got there through foul play. Alas, the pig had\nmade a bit of a meal of the man before his body was removed. Numerous males of\nthe community are concerned the sight of the mangled corpse may be too much for\nthe young Xiang-hua. But she does not shrink from the task. Trained as a healer\nby her grandmother, Xiang-hua is determined to fulfill her obligations\n(striking a feminist note that resonates in the 21st century). It\u2019s tough, but\nshe\u2019s in possession of herself well enough to discover the dead man, muddy and\nbloody, had been stabbed in the back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The local officials want to know the victim\u2019s identity and,\nif possible, who stabbed him, before they have to report the crime to higher\nauthorities. If they fail to find out, it will likely to bring down the wrath\nof the bureaucracy, never a pleasant outcome in ancient China, as punishments\nwere plentiful and harsh. This is a prime example of how De Voe uses\n700-year-old realities to create situations that adhere to one of the basic\nmemes of modern crime stories: the ticking clock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The investigation enables a fascinating trip back to a colorful and simpler time, and though the culture was so different, human emotions and motivations are the same across eons. De Voe\u2019s training as an anthropologist and her advanced degree in Asian studies mean that what she writes carries an authority based on deep knowledge of that long-ago culture and society. I\u2019ll be looking forward to more of her excellent tales!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By PA De Voe \u2013 If you want a total escape from Brexit or US or European politics, PA De Voe\u2019s second-in-series Ming Dynasty Mystery, No Way to Die, will take you back to late 1300s China. As a devoted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"No Way To Die - escape today's news cycle with a trip back to Ming Dynasty China in PA DeVoe's charming mystery series. No Way to Die reviewed here.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[440,53,1288,40,266,3,126,359],"tags":[468,383,1602,1601],"class_list":["post-8070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","category-criminal","category-culture","category-fiction","category-history","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-review","tag-china","tag-historical-novel","tag-no-way-to-die","tag-p-a-de-voe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/2019-07-14-14.55.41-e1563152836988.jpg?fit=400%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-26a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8070"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8072,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions\/8072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}