Another great contemporary mystery by Lisa See

books:


	• Dragon Bones: A Red Princess Mystery (Red Princess Mysteries) Lisa See Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not the same calibre as Snow Flower

This isn't a bad book but it isn't in the same league with Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Dragon Bones by Lisa See

What a writer ! Lisa See educates without being pedantic. In Dragon Bones, she has created a complex mystery while including enormous amounts of information on Chinese culture and environmental effects of the Three Gorges Dam. I learned much and was entertained as well.

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Another great contemporary mystery by Lisa See

Dragon Bones is Lisa See's third contemporary Chinese mystery featuring Inspector Liu Hulan. I read the first one, Flower Net, and somehow the second passed me by. Like Flower Net, Dragon Bones is both a great detective story and a window into modern Chinese culture. Lisa See manages to show us a lot about a rapidly modernizing China without bogging down the story. Liu Hulan is the kind of character I'd like to have a meal with: smart, interesting, with pain in her past but not consumed by it. Lisa See has a gift at making the character seem completely Chinese to the Western reader yet sympathetic at the same time.

Having recently read, and loved, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel, , I understand more about Lisa See's strengths as a writer. Depiction of foreign culture: fantastic. Male characters: not so much. This wasn't as apparent in Snow Flower because the men lived in a different world from the women characters that were the focus of the story. In Dragon Bones, Hulan is married to an American man, David Stark. David's character never comes to life like Hulan's. Although he and I (and the writer) have more in common than Liu Hulan and I do, never the less, Hulan is fully three-dimensional and believable where David falls flat.

If you like mysteries that are different without being gimmicky, you will enjoy this book. There's no need to read them in order although I'm sure there are some benefits from doing so. There are some graphic crime scenes, as a warning to the squeamish.

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Another good book by Ms See

What I like best about Lisa See is usually not the novel in itself, but the detailed, and genuine aspects of China and its culture. I really enjoy learning chinese words and the traditions of this unique country.
The story is a mistery/thriller that revolves around the construction of the biggest Dam in the world, the impact that this will have on China's culture and the discovery of a very important artefact that could also change China's history, forever. In between there are gruesome murders and religious cults, and the rekindling of love between american lawyer Stark and his chinese wife Liu Hulan. Together they'll try to solve the murders and the mistery and, hopefully, save their love.

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mystery at the three gorges

Ms. See does it again! This is a story in which you can find out about the effects of long-time water immersion on a human body, the largest mushrooms in the world, the result of the three gorges dam project, and the corruption of public officials. A page-turner for sure!!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

In a magnificent land where myth mixes treacherously with truth, one woman is in charge of telling them apart. Liu Hulan is the Inspector in China?s Ministry of Public Security whose tough style rousts wrongdoers and rubs her superiors the wrong way. Now her latest case finds her trapped between her country?s distant past and her own recent history.

The case starts at a rally for a controversial cult that ends suddenly in bloodshed, and leads to the apparent murder of an American archaeologist, which officials want to keep quiet. And haunting Hulan?s investigation is the possible theft of ancient dragon bones that might alter the history of civilization itself.

Getting to the bottom of ever-spiraling events, Hulan unearths more scandals, confronts more murderers, and revives tragic memories that shake her tormented marriage to its core. In the end, she solves a mystery as big, unruly, and complex as China itself.

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