This is bestselling writer Song Ying’s first novel translated into English, and it gets straight to the point. We open with Hu Guohao struggling in the water off Shenzhen, drowning despite being a strong swimmer. He hears a voice: “He’s dead.”
And then he is. The next day, his body washes up on Lesser Meisha, a popular tourist beach. The central mystery of the novel thus reveals itself right away. Who has murdered this property tycoon, and how exactly did they do it?
Or as Dr. Seuss might have put it: Killed Hu, who? How?
The police assume it is a heart attack at first; but intrepid reporter Nie Feng has his suspicions, having interviewed Hu a few days earlier.
“Nie could still recall Hu’s ambitions buyout plans, his insightful views on real estate development in western China, as well as the tycoon’s expansive manner. How could such an energetic heavyweight die so suddenly?... Perhaps owing to his instincts as a journalist, Nie felt that Hu’s death was too sudden.”
All hail Nie’s instincts! For there was indeed foul play, it turns out – the autopsy reveals the wrong kind of water in the lungs – and the investigation gets serious.
Thanks to family connections, Nie is able to pull some strings and tag along with the police, who soon grow to respect him due to his ability to point out the incredibly obvious.
Also, as the admirable police-press bond grows, they sometimes make jokes. The most hilarious one is when they repeatedly call his magazine Western Sun – for it is in fact called Western Sunshine!
But it’s not all high wit. There’s a mystery to get on with solving. Various people stand to gain from Hu’s death. His widow, well aware of his womanizing, stands to inherit his share of Landmark Properties, making her a very wealthy woman. This fact makes a big impression on the police team: “’Oh!’ was the consensus response.”
There’s also rival dodgy builder Hong Yiming, who can take commercial advantage of Hu’s death. And there’s company vice president Zhou Zhengxing, who is well placed to take over and had big disagreements with Hu over the direction to take the company.
Upon revealing the hidden debts Hu had built up, Zhou is chosen as the new CEO. This is good news for him, since we know Hu has an excellent office: “All the furnishings were of the finest quality, including the carpet, with its auspicious design, and the linen wall hangings.” Now that’s motive.
But Nie’s borderline psychic power to read character at a glance tells him Zhou may not be the baddie. “His first impression was of an upright, honest man of considerable wisdom who only looked to be slightly simple-minded... he looked both intelligent and competent.”
Both intelligent and competent! Only slightly simple-minded! There’s no arguing with that. Perhaps we need to look elsewhere. Perhaps we need to look to... the past. For somebody has marked Hu’s body with a strange symbol, similar to the Chinese character for ‘mountain,’ but with an additional fiery element.
Even more notably, someone delivers “an eerie wreath” to the funeral, with the written message “A well-deserved death.” Song Ying brings this pivotal scene to vivid life: “The mourners looked at each other and facial expressions ran the gamut, as did the views on what they were seeing.”
Further investigation reveals the unsavory aspect of Hu’s life, and they find a secret room beside his office that “seemed like the pleasure dome of an Arabian sultan. It was a windowless suite... on the wall hung deer heads and Burmese swords, which were infused with intrigue in the dim yellow light.”
There are also lots of mirrors, and a safe full of cash and naughty DVDs and photos. Yowza!
Flashbacks take us to the most interesting part of the book, as we discover a tragedy among the ‘sent down’ youth of the early 70s, in this case a team of Chengdu youngsters sent to Yunnan Province. An accidental fire killed 10 of them; but what is the connection to Hu, and is somebody seeking revenge? And who has started blackmailing the people in Hu’s life?
Goldblatt and Lin handle the translation, which won’t have taxed them too much. Their work rate is incredible – as the blurb on the book points out, they “have translated the work of virtually all the major novelists of the post-Mao era.” Major novelists, plus Song Ying, they can now say.
Despite some glimmers of originality, Apricot’s Revenge is more often unintentionally amusing than it is intriguing – much like its unfortunate English-language title. No cliché is left unturned, and the truth of the crime is revealed rather than deduced. In the end, it all comes down to one question: Who Hu?
Song Ying: Apricot’s Revenge – A Crime Story (Minotaur Books) is available on Amazon.
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