Christopher West - Author

It’s often said that your second novel is the great hurdle you have to leap over. This is probably more true of literary fiction, where many stories come direct from the author’s own life, than crime - but I still found the idea of starting all over again rather daunting. However if you are to create a crime series, that’s what you have to do…I decided to move the location to the Chinese countryside, not permanently, but as a one-off. I’d loved my visits to rural China, and was eager to write about it. And, of course, it is still the home to most Chinese: at time of writing Black Dragon, around 800,000,000 human beings, double the population of the entire European Union. (Now, more people have moved to the cities, but rural China is still almost unfathomably vast.)

The Chinese conception of the countryside is very different from our western European one. We rather hanker after it, and people like my wife and I choose to live in it. Most Chinese I meet think this is totally barmy. Who’d live in the sticks, when you could live in a city? Deng Xiaoping, the ‘paramount leader’ from 1978 to 1992 came from a small Sichuan village - and never went back there. Can one imagine a Western politician not milking their ‘roots’ in the same way? So, in a sense, Wang’s hankering to revisit rural Shandong Province is untypical. But he is not a successful operator in Beijing (he’s an excellent cop, but that’s not the same thing) and a traditionalist at heart, so I knew it was what he would have wanted to do. Even if the location might not have had the allure of a Cotswold village, his family ties and loyalty would have compelled him.

Rosina, of course, is rather less keen… I wanted the inspector to settle down with the nurse he had hooked up with at the end of Blue Lantern - so he did (such is the power of authorship. If only real life were that way…) I’d come to feel that the ‘divorced cop’ was a bit of a cliché. I also really enjoyed writing the character of Rosina Lin, as a contrast to Wang: she is a city woman, modern and independently minded (I’d say ‘feisty’, but the word has become as much a cliché as the divorced cop). She loves him for his kindness and for his depth and strength of character, but the couple are in many ways different.

A key theme of Black Dragon River is the Cultural Revolution and its after-effects. The Cultural Revolution (1966 - 76) was one of the most bizarre and horrific events of post-war history, when Mao tried to destroy all vestiges of traditional Chinese culture and replace it with a grotesque cult of his own power-bloated personality and tinpot philosophy. (There’s a very thorough Wikipedia entry if you want to know more about this event.) Young people were especially manipulated to do cruel deeds and, in the worst cases, to betray their parents and family (particularly heinous in China). What had become of these youngsters now, I wondered?

I have Chinese friends who lived through this era: they just ‘ran with the pack’ and didn’t do wicked things themselves. They suffered through enduring discomfort and receiving lousy education, but have clear consciences. But what of those who got caught up in the enthusiasm and committed acts they now, as adults, know to have been monstrous? I found that question fascinating, and gave Wang a brother, still living back in the home village, whose life had been ruined by such recriminations.

At the same time, I also wanted to look forward. ‘To grow rich is honourable,’ Deng Xiaoping had said in 1985 (no doubt, to the sound of the Great Helmsman rotating in his grave). Entrepreneurs were flourishing, even in rural areas. Sometimes they were creating power for themselves as well as money. How, exactly, would this change a rural community - and would these people always use power wisely?

The novel begins with Wang and Rosina travelling to Shandong. They are at first feted by the local dignitaries in a surreal (but not atypical) banquet. But then they are suddenly accused of meddling in local politics and ordered to leave. And then the local Party Secretary is found bludgeoned to death with a bust of Karl Marx… The inspector soon finds himself caught up in the investigation - and having to face facts about his own family that he would rather not know.

Black Dragon River got good reviews, especially in the prestigious ‘Literary Review’. I also got a profile in the Eastern Daily Press (a photographer came along and took some shots: later I got a phone call saying could I do the shoot again, as he’d forgotten to put any film in his camera…)

Any regrets about the book, looking back? No, not really. The title was a bit of a compromise. I wanted to call it The Hunger of Ghosts, as it is about the haunting effects of the past, and because ghosts in Chinese mythology are unpleasant creatures, usually hungry for revenge. But I was persuaded otherwise, and kept the Death / colour / something- iconically-Chinese format.

But otherwise, of the four Wang / Rosina novels, this is my favourite. It isn’t just a mystery, but a novel about violence, its political abuse, its lasting effects on both perpetrators and victims. It’s also about how to step out of the shadow of violence and reclaim humanity and dignity.