1. Judge Dee at Work
This collection contains eight cases from different stages of Judge Dee’s career between 663 and 674. The stories take him from his first district at Peng-lai through Han-yuan, Poo-yang and Lan-fang, allowing the collection to connect incidents that occur between the longer novels. The cases range…
2. Murder in Canton
Now a senior judicial official, Judge Dee travels to Canton after an imperial censor disappears in the southern port. The investigation expands through three murders and the commercial communities of a city where Chinese officials, foreign merchants and religious minorities meet under the authority of the…
3. Necklace and Calabash
Travelling back to Poo-yang, Judge Dee stops at Rivertown hoping for several quiet days of fishing. A meeting with a Taoist recluse, a body recovered from the river and the suspicious guests of the Kingfisher Inn instead draw him towards the nearby Water Palace and the…
4. Poets and Murder
During the Mid-Autumn Festival at Chin-hwa, Judge Dee joins a gathering of scholars that includes a celebrated poetess, a Zen monk renowned for calligraphy and a former president of the imperial academy. A student is found dead amid rumours of a fox demon, and a young…
5. The Chinese Maze Murders
Newly posted to the western district of Lan-fang, Judge Dee confronts three cases involving poisoned plums, a cryptic scroll painting and a succession dispute surrounding the former governor’s estate. Passionate letters and the design of a garden maze conceal connections between political power, inheritance and the…
6. The Emperor’s Pearl
During the dragon-boat festival at Poo-yang in 669, a drummer collapses in the leading boat and the body of a young woman is discovered in an abandoned country house. Judge Dee finds that the two deaths are connected to rumours of a fabulous pearl stolen from…
7. The Haunted Monastery
A mountain storm forces Judge Dee, his wives and his attendants to seek shelter in a large Taoist monastery. Soon after delivering an ecstatic sermon, the abbot dies in circumstances the monks describe as supernatural, while Dee learns that three young women have previously died there…
8. The Lacquer Screen
Early in his career, Judge Dee visits Magistrate Teng and is shown a lacquer screen whose image of two lovers appears to have changed into a scene of murder. Teng fears that mental illness will drive him to kill his wife, while the apparently inexplicable suicide…
9. The Monkey and the Tiger
The Morning of the Monkey begins when a gibbon drops an emerald into Judge Dee’s residence, leading him to a mutilated body hidden in the woods and a case involving merchants, family secrets and the treatment of travelling performers. The investigation takes place during Dee’s posting…
10. The Phantom of the Temple
During Judge Dee’s posting at Lan-fang, three unresolved matters demand his attention: a merchant’s missing daughter, twenty bars of gold that vanished while under official control and a headless body discovered near an abandoned temple. What appear to be separate crimes are connected by the concealed…
11. The Red Pavilion
While visiting Paradise Island during a festival, Judge Dee encounters Autumn Moon, the most powerful courtesan in its entertainment quarter. A recent suicide, an older unexplained death and a new killing draw him into the Red Pavilion, where several generations of passion and resentment have left…
12. The Willow Pattern
Serving as emergency governor of the imperial capital during plague and drought, Judge Dee must maintain order as hunger and fear threaten an uprising. The death of an aristocrat in a deserted mansion appears accidental, but a shattered willow-pattern vase and the body of a bondmaid…