Thief of Souls: An Inspector Lu Fei Mystery

by Brian Klingborg

Overview

In Brian Klingborg's Thief of Souls, the brutal murder of a young woman in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing—but seemingly only Inspector Lu Fei, living in exile in the small town, is interested in justice for the victim.

Lu Fei is a graduate of China’s top police college but he’s been assigned to a sleepy backwater town in northern China, where almost nothing happens and the theft of a few chickens represents a major crime wave. That is until a young woman is found dead, her organs removed, and joss paper stuffed in her mouth. The CID in Beijing—headed by a rising political star—is on the case but in an increasingly authoritarian China, prosperity and political stability are far more important than solving the murder of an insignificant village girl. As such, the CID head is interested in pinning the crime on the first available suspect rather than wading into uncomfortable truths, leaving Lu Fei on his own.

As Lu digs deeper into the gruesome murder, he finds himself facing old enemies and creating new ones in the form of local Communist Party bosses and corrupt business interests. Despite these rising obstacles, Lu remains determined to find the real killer, especially after he links the murder to other unsolved homicides. But the closer he gets to the heart of the mystery, the more he puts himself and his loved ones in danger.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250848161
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/17/2022
Series:	Inspector Lu Fei Series , #1
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,059,409
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

BRIAN KLINGBORG has both a B.A. (University of California, Davis) and an M.A. (Harvard) in East Asian Studies and spent years living and working in Asia. He currently works in early childhood educational publishing and lives in New York City. Klingborg is also the author of Kill Devil Falls.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2021

A falling-out with a superior in Harbin City, China, results in Insp. Lu Fei, the hero of Klingborg’s middling debut and series launch, getting transferred to the quiet township of Raven Valley, where he serves as the deputy chief of police. Lu’s job demands little of him, until the body of 23-year-old Yang Fenfang, who worked in a Harbin bar and was living with her dying mother in Raven Valley, is found in her mother’s house “hollowed out like a birchbark canoe.” Yang’s ex-boyfriend, a slow-witted butcher who flees the police interrogation, becomes the prime suspect, despite Lu’s reservations. Those doubts are vindicated when he learns of two unsolved murders with the same m.o. Passages explaining how recent Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution, have affected Lu’s family compensate only in part for an underdeveloped lead and the superficial presentation of the country’s politics and tensions. This by-the-numbers thriller falls short of the standard set by such other serial murderer novels set in repressive regimes as Harald Gilbers’s Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin. A confident style suggests Klingborg can do better. Agent: Bob Diforio, D4EO Literary. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Klingborg’s crisp prose keeps the narrative on the boil all the way to a climax." —The Toronto Star

"Riveting." —Booklist

"This auspicious mystery begs for a sequel. Please let it be soon." —BookPage

"Engrossing and atmospheric, Thief of Souls, takes us through the dirty snow of a Chinese province in a hunt for a serial killer. Police investigator Lu Fei, quotes Confucius, understands the power of the past, and navigates corruption and back-handing among Chairman Mao’s descendents. An unmissable journey with a Confucian knight errant for the 21st century." —Cara Black

"A gruesome crime; a rural cop with a keen mind and a sense of his place in modern-day China—Thief of Souls is written with humor and insight, supplying from page one a plot that rolls steadily down the runway, constantly gaining speed the whole way until with a final burst of takeoff velocity, it takes you to a place you never thought you’d be." — James Church, author of the Inspector O series

"Like Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko or Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti, Klingborg's Inspector Lu Fei is a determined investigator as well as a wonderful guide to a country and culture unfamiliar to most readers. Thief of Souls is a thrilling mystery and a delightful novel from beginning to end." —Barbara Nickless, author of the Sydney Parnell series

"With a compelling story, a rich, well-realized setting, and a thoroughly engaging protagonist, Thief of Souls delivers everything one could want in a crime novel - insight, thrills, and entertainment. This is not one to miss!" — Robert K. Tanenbaum, New York Times bestselling author of Without Fear or Favor

"Brian Klingborg's Thief of Souls offers a wonderful view into the life of a rural town in the orbit of one of China's huge but secondary cities. Klingborg truly understands how Chinese bureaucracies work; at the same time he's a wizard at believable characters, compelling situations, and a propulsive plot. I'm already looking forward to the second book in this series." — SJ Rozan, Edgar Award winner and best-selling author of Paper Son

"With a great protagonist, a unique setting, and a fast-paced story, Thief of Souls is everything a reader could want in a novel." — Jack Du Brul, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Titanic Secret and author of The Lightning Stones

From the Publisher

12/01/2020

Haines's Independent Bones features PI Sarah Booth Delaney, caught up with protecting a visiting professor of Greek literature at Ole Miss whose radical feminism may have sparked murder (40,000-copy first printing). In Jonasson's latest, Una is teaching in a remote Icelandic village when she discovers dark secrets the polite if distant villages have kept hidden for generations—perhaps involving The Girl Who Died (50,000-copy first printing). A peasant girl is murdered in a northern Chinese village, and exiled inspector Lu Fei takes the case in Klingborg's Thief of Souls (75,000-copy first printing). Brought back by Lupica in 2018, PI Sunny Randall investigates the suicide of best friend Spike's 20-year old niece in Robert B. Parker's Payback. In 1910, a senior barrister is found dead in a notorious London slum, and junior barrister Daniel Pitt endangers his family by investigating in Perry's Death with a Double Edge. In Walker's The Coldest Case, applying the facial reconstruction tools used on ancient skulls to the skull of a long-dead murder victim leads Bruno, chief of police in fictional town in the Dordogne, to the activities of a Cold War-era Communist organization. With A Peculiar Combination, Louisiana librarian Weaver detours from her beloved Amory Ames books to launch a new series starring Electra "Ellie" McDonnell, who cracks safes with locksmith uncle Mick to make ends meet in World War II England and agrees to help the government when she's caught (40,000-copy first printing).

Library Journal

2021-01-27
A maverick Chinese police detective hunts a twisted serial killer.

In the Raven Valley Township of northern China, Inspector Lu Fei is drinking himself into his customary oblivion at the Red Lotus bar when he’s called to a brutal murder scene. The young victim, Yang Fenfang, has been “hollowed out like a birchbark canoe.” Suspicion immediately falls on her boyfriend, Zhang Zhaoxing, who works as a butcher. Once he’s arrested, Lu’s bosses at the Public Security Bureau are content to end the investigation and incarcerate Zhang. Klingborg takes the time to lay out the structure and conventions of law enforcement in China, a welcome aid for Western readers. Lu finds a kindred spirit in sarcastic medical examiner Dr. Ma Xiulan, who takes his rejection of her sexual advances in stride. No forensic evidence implicates Zhang. Though Lu thinks the young man is innocent, he’s overruled by his superiors, who order that Zhang be kept in custody until more conclusive evidence against him can be found. A wave of protests has little effect on this decision. But the discovery of two similar murders in nearby Harbin gives the investigation new life. Terse dialogue dominates this series debut, which wraps its depiction of contemporary Chinese society in the tropes of police novels. Even when the righteous Lu goes too far in interrogating a suspect, he keeps on going.

Klingborg’s twisty, tense police procedural seems poised to kick off a series.

Kirkus Reviews