Book Review: Hanging Devils, He Jiahong

Hong Jun is a private lawyer, educated in Chicago and just returned to Beijing to help build the rule of law in the new China of the 1990s. With these lofty ideals, he takes on the job of overturning a verdict on a peculiar case, in which a young woman was raped and murdered in a village in the Heilongjiang mountains ten years ago. The man jailed for the crime nursed an unrequited love for the girl and even confessed, but most (including her actual lover, also a suspect) assumed that it wasn’t that simple.

As Hong Jun tries to unravel the icy cold case (this is the bitter Northeast, after all), he comes across a rainbow of contemporary society: plucky assistants, nouveau riche construction magnates, reticent government officials, burly mountaineers and even a bona-fide crazy lady.

While author He Jiahong sheds much light on China’s legal system of the time, the world he creates is like a bouncy castle: a neat ecosystem where all the important characters seem to bump into one another with alarming ease. For a crime noir, he also punctures suspense too willingly, sometimes spoiling his own plot points. That aside, the case is based on true events, and the story itself is enough to keep those pages turning, making for a great fireside (or heaterside?) read.

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This article originally appeared on page 49 of the November issue of the Beijinger.