History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 7/10

• Accuracy: Solid on legal and frontier administration, with van Gulik’s usual candid blending of periods.
• Plot: Three cases on a remote frontier: a locked-room death, a disputed will hidden in a painting, and a missing girl.
• Clues: Ingenious, especially the scroll and the garden maze, which reward careful reading.
• Reveal: Neat and logical, though the emotional payoff is muted.

Judge Dee arrives in Lan-fang, a frontier district where a local strongman has effectively seized control. Before he can restore order, he faces three puzzles. A retired general is found dead in his locked library. A former governor has left a strange landscape painting that seems to conceal his real will. And a girl has disappeared.

This was the first Judge Dee novel van Gulik wrote himself, though English readers got it only after Japanese and Chinese editions. It shows him fusing traditional Chinese structure with Western techniques, especially the locked room and the hidden-document puzzle.

The scroll is the book’s centrepiece. The old governor’s intentions are encoded in a painted pavilion, which eventually connects to a real garden labyrinth. The idea is ingenious, and the plans and illustrations let readers attempt the solution themselves.

The frontier setting is well used. Lan-fang is exposed to raids and far from central authority, and Dee’s position is precarious. His handling of the strongman shows a pragmatic, political side of the judge that later books sometimes lose.

The weaknesses are character and tone. Dee’s assistants are colourful but sketchy, and the dialogue has a formal, translated stiffness. The missing-girl case involves sexual violence treated with a bluntness that sits awkwardly beside the playful puzzles.

The 7 reflects a strong puzzle novel that is a little less balanced than The Chinese Bell Murders. Readers who love mechanical cleverness may prefer it, and its maze remains one of van Gulik’s best ideas.