Wexford Hallucinates and Rendell brings the Cringe
Review of the Arrow Books/Cornerstone Digital Kindle eBook edition (2010) of the original Hutchinson (UK) hardcover (1983).

‘Velly well. I hope you not leglet,’ said Mr Sung, indignation, as any emotion did, causing acute confusion in the pronunciation of liquids. ‘I aflaid you be solly.’ - Wexford’s Chinese tour guide reacts to his refusal to view the college attended by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.

I was only a few pages into The Speaker of Mandarin before the cringe began with Rendell’s portrayal of Wexford’s Chinese tour guide. Thankfully it is mostly contained in those early pages. The book has an odd beginning as the first 1/3rd of it tells of Wexford’s trip to China on a police investigative procedures exchange mission organized by Wexford’s nephew, & London CID Chief Inspector, Howard Fortune. After the official meetings Wexford takes a solo vacation to various tourist sites before joining his wife Dora in Hong Kong. The tour group trip in Communist China is monitored of course by the authorities, with a full-time guide individually assigned to him. During his travels Wexford consumes an inordinate amount of green tea to combat the heat and suffers from hallucinations as a result*.

There are other people on the tour and various odd events occur, including one seemingly accidental death of a local Chinese man. On Wexford’s return home there is a murder of one of the other tourists from the journey and the investigation requires that he re-examine those tour events in hindsight to understand the reason for the recent crime. There are of course a few twists along the way and the explanation for the book’s title is also not explained until the end.

The cringe at the front end was brief, but still the overall arc of the book felt unsatisfactory and I just can’t say that I even liked it. It falls into the rare case of a 2 star “it was just ok” rating, compared to my usual 3 to 5 star ratings for Rendell’s books and those of her alter-ego Barbara Vine. Also Wexford's usual references, quotes and allusions to classic literature, which often provide comic relief, were few and far between.

This book continued my 2023 binge read / re-read of Ruth Rendell and this is the 12th of the Inspector Wexford series. I’m trying to read the Wexfords in chronological order, but had to temporarily skip over #11 Put on by Cunning (1981), as it has been difficult to source.

See cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Thespeakerofmandarin.jpg
Cover image for the original Hutchinson (UK) hardcover edition from 1983. Image sourced from Wikipedia. May be found at the following website: http://pictures.abebooks.com/SARAWILLIAMS2/8463207784.jpg., Fair use, Link

Footnote
* The reason for the hallucinations is not revealed until the end of the book by Wexford’s doctor so that is why I’ve spoiler blocked it. Once you read about it you will definitely want to google it though, and you get results like this.

Other Reviews
The review at The Passing Tramp is based on a 2019 re-read and also mentions the now dated racial stereotyped portrayals. The review goes on to mention Rendell having toured the Far East (which likely provided source material for the book) and her own distant family connection to a Burmese relative.

Trivia and Links
The Speaker of Mandarin was adapted for television as part of the Ruth Rendell / Inspector Wexford Mysteries TV series (1987-2000) as Season 6 Episodes 1 to 3 in 1992 with actor George Baker as Inspector Wexford. You can watch the entire 3 episodes on YouTube here.

While reading The Speaker of Mandarin, I happened to notice a recent CNN March 27, 2023 article about modern day edits of Agatha Christie's books. While I am against censorship in general, as I think it is better to learn from the mistakes of the past, there are certainly cases where it seems warranted, such as the unfortunate original 2 titles of Christie's [book:And Then There Were None|16299] (1939). ( )

On holiday in China, Wexford finds himself haunted by the figure of an elderly woman whose feet were bound as a child. Distracted by these hallucinations, he misses clues to the later murder of one of a party of travellers back in England.

The travelogue of Wexford's holiday in China was a bit overlong but once the main story got underway it was all competently done ( )

(2) This is the 12th book of Rendell's Inspector Wexford's series - Wexford is on vacation in China and meets a group of tourists. It turns out when he gets back to England, one couple lives nearby and he is called to their house as the wife has just been murdered, execution style with a bullet in the back of the head. Could this have anything to do with the China trip? Wexford struggles to recall all his memories from the trip, but he himself was haunted by hallucinations of an old lady with bound feet while on the trip. Or were they hallucinations?

Anyway, the book is different in that there is a great deal of what feels like authentic sight-seeing around China. The heat, the mountains, the birth place of Mao Ze Dung, the claustrophobic tour guides and heavy handed government. Definitely not politically correct, not shockingly. The 'cultural appropriation' would be demonized these days. But the mystery itself was humdrum. I really don't think there was much of any clues regarding the actual perpetrator and so many other red herrings that it would be almost impossible to have guessed.

I read it pretty quickly, but it wasn't as engaging as some in the series. A generous 3 stars and I will likely not be back to these for a bit. I am thinking I may abandon for awhile and begin Inspector Poirot instead. ( )

A calming intricate one. Good atmosphere. ( )

Geschenk von Merle 2017