Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

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Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 · rating details · 1,660 ratings · 437 reviews

In the last days of old Peking, where anything goes, can a murderer escape justice?

Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and the discovery of Pamela Werner's body sends a shiver through already nervous Peking. Is it the work of a madman? One of the ruthless Japanese so...more

Hardcover, 260 pages

Published April 24th 2012 by Penguin (Non-Classics) (first published January 1st 2011)

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Jul 25, 2012 Rebecca Martin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: global-detective-fiction, china

I put this book in my "Global detective fiction" shelf, though let me say right away that it is not fiction. I enjoyed every minute of this book and it ended all too soon.

The time is 1937 and the place is the area in and around the Foreign Legation quarters in old Peking. Politics all over the world are in turmoil with events leading to WWII taking place in Europe, and in China the brutal Japanese are invading and the already feeble nationalist government is on the ropes.

A nearly-19 year old Eng...more I put this book in my "Global detective fiction" shelf, though let me say right away that it is not fiction. I enjoyed every minute of this book and it ended all too soon.

The time is 1937 and the place is the area in and around the Foreign Legation quarters in old Peking. Politics all over the world are in turmoil with events leading to WWII taking place in Europe, and in China the brutal Japanese are invading and the already feeble nationalist government is on the ropes.

A nearly-19 year old Englishwoman, Pamela Werner, is killed, her body mutilated and dumped at the base of the Fox Tower just outside the Legation. The details of the joint Chinese and English investigation, its constraints and its flaws is fascinating in and of itself. When the investigation is unable to point to a culprit, Pamela's father spends the rest of his years in Peking doing the investigation that the police should have done. But his findings fall on deaf ears. Are the British afraid to lose face? Is that why the British powers ignore the findings and call their representative on the team home to Tientsin? Was the original investigation, which seemed fairly competent for the time and place, in fact, undercut by restraints and subterfuge on the Chinese side? Peking soon falls to the Japanese...is it just that everyone has more important things to think about than a dead girl who was a bit of a handful while she was alive and perhaps no better than she should have been?

Historian Paul French has reconstructed the entire case, from the events leading up to the fatal night, to the actions and investigations of all of the parties involved. He quite literally found by fortunate accident a folder of records stored in the British archives that traced the case, including ETC Werner's many letters filled with his additional investigations and pleading for more action on the case. From these records and his other investigations, French puts together a quite believable chain of events and points the finger at one man in particular. This case was unsolved from 1937 to 2011 and quite forgotten, but it is now resolved and there can be little doubt that French's version is valid.

Ok, THAT is the story. It's well-told and reads like an exciting murder mystery. For me, the bonus was the very detailed portrait of Peking during this period and the foreign presence in China's coastal cities such as Shanghai and Tientsin. I can't say enough about the lively realistic (and unsavory) picture that emerges of the Legation area of Peking. I spent half the time I was supposedly reading the book looking for maps online so I could follow the action. It turns out that many of the places and streets that feature prominently in the story are still there (remarkable, considering the construction in Beijing over the last few decades).

If you are interested in that aspect of the story, start with the Wikipedia entry on "Beijing Legation Quarter" and follow links to maps. There is also this Paul French link: http://us.midnightinpeking.com/pdf/a-...

Breaking news, Midnight in Peking Walking Tour! http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/play/ha...

When can I go???!

I could go on and on because I found this book utterly fascinating. The murder mystery was only one part of its appeal, for this reader.(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Hannah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads, historicals, true-crime, non-fiction

Bloody brillant true crime book. This Paul French fellow knows how to write an awesome non-fiction tale to satisfy my personal tastes.

Full review to come later.

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May 17, 2012 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: china, historical-true-crime

If you've picked this book up expecting yet another true-crime novel filled with the titillating and tantalizing details that normally make these books sell well, forget it -- you've got the wrong book. By the very nature of the title, it should be very clear that there's going to be some historical component to this book, so don't be surprised.

Part history, part cold-case mystery, Midnight in Peking began literally as a footnote the author happened to read in a biography of Edgar Snow, an Amer...more If you've picked this book up expecting yet another true-crime novel filled with the titillating and tantalizing details that normally make these books sell well, forget it -- you've got the wrong book. By the very nature of the title, it should be very clear that there's going to be some historical component to this book, so don't be surprised.

Part history, part cold-case mystery, Midnight in Peking began literally as a footnote the author happened to read in a biography of Edgar Snow, an American journalist and author who may likely have been the first western journalist to interview Mao Zedong. As the author notes in his "The Writing of Midnight in Peking," a brief piece added to the book after the main story, mention was made of Snow's wife Helen, who was nervous due to the discovery of the body of young Pamela Werner not too far from where the Snows lived. The footnote also indicated that Pamela's father was a former British consul in China, and that the murder of Pamela had remained unsolved. With only these few facts to go on, and an inability to stop thinking about Pamela Webster, French started tracking down the long-forgotten story. By chance, one day at the National Archives at Kew, French came across an uncatalogued file in one of several boxes of "random correspondence sent from Peking during the years 1941-45," where he realized that he'd discovered details of the private investigation made by Pamela's father, E.T.C. Werner, who'd tried to solve the case on his own after authorities failed to do so. As it turns out, Werner's inquiries would provide a key that would unlock what may have really happened that fateful night back in January of 1937. While the mystery of who may have killed Pamela Werner unfolds in this book, the author also unravels Peking's social and political history, which helps to place into context the events surrounding and following her untimely death.

On January 8, 1937, Pamela Werner's body was discovered near the city's Fox Tower. Although there was little blood at the scene, Pamela had been severely beaten & cut, and her internal organs had been removed. The motive was not rape -- there was no evidence of sexual assault, nor was there any evidence that her death was the result of a robbery, since she was wearing a very expensive watch when she was found. The night before, Pamela had failed to return home, and her father had been out looking for her into the wee hours of the morning. After going home to get some rest, Werner was back out again on the streets looking for her as the day dawned. He started at the edge of the Legation Quarter, followed the Tatar Wall toward the Fox Tower, and seeing a crowd gathering, went to see what was happening. It was then he discovered that everyone was standing around a corpse, who as fate would have it, turned out to be his missing daughter.

Pamela's death was no ordinary murder case -- au contraire -- it was a very high-profile investigation since Werner had been a British diplomat up until some twenty-plus years earlier when he was recalled to London and his career had come to an end. His wife had died under mysterious circumstances when Pamela was five; since that time, he and his daughter had been living in a neighborhood just outside the Legation Quarter. Werner had a reputation as an outsider and recluse, preferring his books and scholarship to the company of others in the expat community inside the Quarter. He was widely disliked, especially by the British consul, which tended to complicate the investigation into Pamela's murder. The inquiries into Pamela's death proceeded immediately, but it was hampered from the outset. The two chief investigators, Colonel Han Shih-ching, of the Peking Bureau of Public Safety South East Section, and DCI Richard Dennis, brought in from Tientsin’s British Concession as an envoy to monitor the investigation, found their hands increasingly tied. Many witnesses refused to say anything or just vanished; others who might have had connections were never questioned. They received a number of fake confessions, and some native Chinese believed that her death was the work of "fox spirits." Han had no authority inside the Legation Quarter, and when Dennis requested permission to conduct searches there, he was turned down -- it seems that the Administrative Commission of the Diplomatic Quarter, the British Legation and the current British consul felt that a "search of Chinese Peking would be sufficient." Han pursued enquiries in an area near the legation known as "The Badlands," a veritable district of iniquity, home to other another class of foreigners, many of them White Russians serving as pimps, prostitutes, owners of gambling dens, and other shady goings on. It was a place where " peroxide-blonde White Russians past their prime raised their sketched-on eyebrows and offered ‘business’ to the semi-comatose, the paralytic, the close to broke." And it was also where Pamela was likely murdered before being dumped at the Fox Tower.

But with the Japanese moving closer to Peking, some scant nine miles away, the city became "obsessed with its own survival," in the face of daily assassinations, and among other things, a "guerrila war...being fought on the streets of the city." Leads in Pamela's case were growing scarce; links DCI Dennis had made between possible suspects couldn't be linked directly to her murder, and in July, 1937, the Japanese finally entered Peking, ending the official search for Pamela's killer. Unofficially, Pamela's father never let go of the case; he hired his own eyes and ears, emptying his bank account, but ultimately he did get answers. It is Werner's story and his conclusions that really grab the reader's attention, woven in and among the social and political history of Peking up through the Japanese occupation.

It is very obvious that French has done an immense amount of research, doggedly pursuing police reports, newspaper articles and correspondence to reconstruct this brief episode. He writes that he "rechecked every false scent and misguided trail, every officious injunction from the British authorities" in putting together this book about Pamela's death, in the hopes that "some sort of justice, however, belated, be awarded her." At the same time, it is no dry history that has to be slogged through -- his writing brings old Peking alive and gives life to a murder case that began as a mere footnote. And while the book may not actually read like a fast-paced thriller as some have noted, the mystery of who killed Pamela Werner, and especially her father's dogged determination to find her killer are enough to keep anyone from setting it down for any length of time. This book goes well beyond the usual "true-crime" sort of novel to become a compelling read in terms of a crime, a city, and the devotion of a father to his daughter.

Highly recommended.(less)

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Aug 18, 2012 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

Paul French's true crime story combines the tale of the cold case murder of the teen-age daughter of a former British consul in Peking in 1937 with a historical discussion of the Japanese invasion of China during the same time period. While the history helps set the context it at times seems extraneous; it often doesn't add to or explain what we know about Pamela's murder or those who committed the crime. There is also a drag in the middle of the book as the official investigation closes, and he...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Bettie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Bettie by: Laura

Shelves: published-2011, radio-4, true-grime, history, summer-2012, china

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 17, 2013 Leah rated it 5 of 5 stars

‘The evil that men do lives after them...’

This is a fascinating story of a true-life crime committed in the last days of old Peking as the threat of invasion, war and revolution spread fear amongst the Chinese and foreign inhabitants of the city.

Author Paul French has researched the murder of 19-year-old Pamela Werner thoroughly and tells the tale well. Was Pamela an innocent schoolgirl or an independent and rebellious young woman bent on sampling some of the excitements Peking could offer? Wa...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Suzy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Chilling, and not only due to the horror of an atrocious murder, in which a nineteen-year-old in Peking is targeted by a gang that the victim's father astutely identifies as "sadist sexualists."

This gripping who-done-it is especially horrifying due to the role high-ranking British authorities played in intentionally deflecting investigators away from the truth in this never-solved murder.

This tragic history -- in which Shanghai-based journalist Paul French does not shy away from details, no mat...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, crime, history, biography

In 1937, the one-time Chinese capital of Peking was in turmoil, a British colonial outpost slowly being choked off by encircling Japanese troops and an internal struggle for the future of the country. On a frigid winter night, Pamela Werner, the daughter of a member of the British legation, is found brutally murdered and mutilated, and in this spiraling, chaotic atmosphere, two detectives - one British and one Chinese - rush to solve the case.

This would be an original enough premise in a novel,...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Irina Wang rated it 3 of 5 stars

In 1937, as the Japanese advanced towards Peking, the old city was further shaken by the ghastly murder of 19-year-old Pamela Werner, daughter of the formal British Consul. The evidence was constantly inconclusive, baffling Detective Chief Inspector Dennis, the Scotland Yard officer who was dispatched from Tientsin to solve the mystery.
This non-fiction murder-investigation story reveals the inflexibility of the police forces, the ugliness of human nature, and the chaos and desperation of the er...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Alison added it · review of another edition

I couldn't put this down, and fortunately had the time not to put it down, since I read it over the New Year break. It's thrilling stuff: an historical true-life murder mystery of a beautiful young English woman in Peking 1937—just before the Japanese occupation—with strained cooperation between British and Chinese authorities, sexual sadism and superstition thrown in. In some ways it reminded me a lot of the Lucie Blackman murder in Japan some sixty years later, including a bumbled police inves...more I couldn't put this down, and fortunately had the time not to put it down, since I read it over the New Year break. It's thrilling stuff: an historical true-life murder mystery of a beautiful young English woman in Peking 1937—just before the Japanese occupation—with strained cooperation between British and Chinese authorities, sexual sadism and superstition thrown in. In some ways it reminded me a lot of the Lucie Blackman murder in Japan some sixty years later, including a bumbled police investigation, media storm, eccentric father who got on the wrong side of people, and obsessed writer determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Midnight in Peking, though, is not journalism, but historic recreation — the literary equivalent of a period piece film. While I highly appreciate the way this kind of writing brings to life past eras, people and places, I can't help feeling uneasy. How does the writer really know what the protagonists are thinking and feeling? How does he know things like the Chinese policeman Colonel Han tried not to shiver when meeting Detective Chief Inspector Dennis at Peking Railway Station so as to make the right impression. It seems to me there is great potential to manipulate the public perception of historical interpretation in this way. Another thing that bugged me was the blatant attempt to milk the superstitious angle for all its worth. I don't know why the characters for 'fox spirts' in overlarge font had to be used as section markers — it was like reading FOX SPIRITS every few pages, and exceedingly annoying.

Nevertheless, it was a good reminder at this juncture in time— the beginning of 2013 with incursions by Chinese ships and planes in Japanese territory around the Senakaku Islands a regular occurrence and a newly-elected right-wing Japanese chafing to flex its military capability—why the Chinese are so hung-up on history when it comes to relations with Japan, because after all the historical events that are the background to this book—like the occupation of Manchuria, Peking and other cities, and rape of Nanking etc.—took place less than a hundred years ago, still within living memory of some, and were hardly those of a benevolent occupier. (less)

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Dec 16, 2012 Owen Spencer rated it 3 of 5 stars

In late-1930s China, a young, upper-class British female was brutally murdered. Her body was badly mutilated and disposed of haphazardly in an area of Peking considered haunted by the locals. The case received significant attention for a short time, but British officials tried hard to cover it up in order to "save face". The dead girl's father continued his investigations long after the police stopped and managed to unearth significant evidence pointing to a conspiracy involving several respecte...more

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Dec 05, 2012 C.J. Shane rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a true crime story, and thanks to author Paul French's superior writing and research skills, it reads wonderfully well. Author Paul French writes a gripping tale, and because he is an historian, he also adds rich historical detail to the story line that makes the book even more interesting.

This true-crime story revolves around the brutal murder of Pamela Werner, a young British woman and daughter of British diplomat, scholar, and Old China Hand Edward Werner. The story is set in the Lega...more This is a true crime story, and thanks to author Paul French's superior writing and research skills, it reads wonderfully well. Author Paul French writes a gripping tale, and because he is an historian, he also adds rich historical detail to the story line that makes the book even more interesting.

This true-crime story revolves around the brutal murder of Pamela Werner, a young British woman and daughter of British diplomat, scholar, and Old China Hand Edward Werner. The story is set in the Legation Quarter, an area of old Peking (now called Beijing) where all the foreign diplomatic legations were found. The Legation was also where all the foreigners lived, worked, and played. They had a self-indulgent and decadent lifestyle almost completely unaffected by the huge city and country surrounding them. But external events intruded. This was 1937, and the foreigners - mainly European and Americans - knew that their days were numbered. Japanese troops were gathering on the outskirts of Peking preparing for the invasion and occupation of both Peking and all of China that came a few months later.

I learned some new things from reading this book, for example, the plight of White Russians who lived in China during this period. I also enjoyed the brief appearance of Helen Foster Snow who thought briefly that she might have been the target of the murderer. It was curious to discover that Helen and her journalist husband Edgar Snow lived the high society life in Peking during the time when they weren't roughing it with Mao in the caves at Yan'an.

Given the tensions of the time leading up to the Japanese invasion, the joint British-Chinese investigation into Pamela's death was ultimately cut short. Edward Werner relentlessly pursued the search for his daughter's killers, and he left behind detailed documents that French was able to access for this book. We come to the end with a pretty sure notion of who committed the crime and why. Getting to that conclusion was worth the effort. This is a real page-turner. I understand, not surprisingly, that _Midnight in Peking_ has been optioned for a movie. (less)

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Dec 03, 2012 Jodi rated it 2 of 5 stars

I reluctantly give this book only 2 stars. While it was certainly informative, I felt there were too many stories going on: A) The murder; B) The history of foreigners in China; C) The impending Japanese invasion; D) The eccentricities of the father of the murdered victim; and E) A modern history of Peking in the early 20th Century. Any one of these topics would make an interesting read, but all 5 in the same book is too much.

If ever a book needed a map, this one is it. Sadly, the publisher chos...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Alysia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book! What a fantastic mystery. The writing is concise, clever, and compelling. French gives just enough detail to really complete the setting when describing old Peking/Beijing. Just enough history to really understand the broader ramifications of what was happening and who is involved. Just when I started to think I'd been given enough detail, he'd bring the detail back around the central characters and what I needed to know. Although the book is non-fiction, it is based on an act...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Grady McCallie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: china

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. True crime more than history, this book recounts the inconclusive official investigation into the murder of a young European woman in Beijing in 1937, just shortly before the Japanese occupied the city. The last third of the book, based heavily on the obsessive research of the victim's father (Werner), offers an interpretation of what really happened. Overall, the book makes an engaging non-fiction police procedural, a sad and sordid story that delivers a kind of belated justice by identifying t...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Seana rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's an odd coincidence that this book forms such a perfect companion piece to Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts. Although I'm sure the publishers recognized a good popular history when they saw one, French tells us in the end how he came upon this tale, and I think it was the fact that it was an intriguing story more than any immediate sense of commercial possibilities that drove him on.

Both books are set in roughly the same period, this one beginning in 1937, Garden of Beasts in 1933. Both...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Nic rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: map-in-the-front, nonfiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. (Map is actually on the endpapers of the book.)

I heard about this book on NPR, and I thought the premise sounded intriguing and the excerpt that was read well-written. In the end, I guess I'd rate it a high 3.5, mostly because I'd like to have seen more taken directly from the research that the author obviously did. For example, he has read many, many pages of letters from the murdered Pamela's father, E.T.C. Werner, but rarely quotes them, though Werner seems to have been an eloquent man.

I was...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Aficionados of the form

Recommended to Alan by: My sister, and the Guardian

True crime is... not my favorite genre. Reviewing the unending variations of human cruelty and malfeasance does not fill me with pleasure or pride in our potential, and inspecting the minutiae of forensic investigation seems not to hold my interest either. But when my sister (who is politically somewhat to the right of me—she actually voted for W., twice!) and the Guardian (which is not right-wing at all) both recommend a book... that intrigues me.

Midnight in Peking is Shanghai-based writer Paul ...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Jillwilson rated it 3 of 5 stars

The first time I went to Beijing (Peking) it was winter and bitterly cold. Snow lay on the ground and the wind made it hard to stay outside for long periods of time. We watched people skating and ‘sledding’ on boxes across a frozen lake and wandered through a deserted Forbidden City. The city seemed peaceful and grand at the same time. The wide streets created a sense of space and calm importance and there was an air of mystery caused by the high walls of government compounds and the walled off...more The first time I went to Beijing (Peking) it was winter and bitterly cold. Snow lay on the ground and the wind made it hard to stay outside for long periods of time. We watched people skating and ‘sledding’ on boxes across a frozen lake and wandered through a deserted Forbidden City. The city seemed peaceful and grand at the same time. The wide streets created a sense of space and calm importance and there was an air of mystery caused by the high walls of government compounds and the walled off hutongs.

During that visit, we had a day of free time, and the group guide suggested that we go to the Beijing Hotel and call out “Hutong, Hutong” to indicate a desire to tour the hutongs (laneways). Bizarrely, this worked. A bedraggled looking man cycled up on a cyclo (out of nowhere) and held out a laminated page of fractured English. It indicated that for a small fee, the cyclo-man would take us into the hutongs to various locations. A couple more cyclo-men turned up to accommodate our numbers and off we went. They spoke little English but were keen to help us make the most of the experience. At one stage, we encountered a man coming out of one of the houses. They must have known that he spoke English and asked if he had time to show us round. He took us into his compound and talked about his life. (That was in 1999. I could write more here about how those tours were commodified in subsequent years and about the man we talked to but that is not the point of this story.)

I thought of this time when I was reading Midnight in Peking, which is set in Peking in winter of 1937 and traces the aftermath of a murder of a young British girl near the Foreign Legation area. I wanted to know where the Foreign Legation was, whether elements of it were still there, whether the Fox Tower (where her body was dumped) still existed, and what it looked like. I wanted to know if the hutongs I’d seen resembled the hutongs of that time. I wanted to know what the dead girl, Pamela Werner, looked like. But I read the book on my eReader – which did not have photos, maps, newspaper articles and so on to embellish the writing. I found these later on a website: http://us.midnightinpeking.com/extras/. I also found a YouTube clip of the author in the hutong where the dead girl had lived with her father, who was a retired British Consul (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfgx_j...).

Of the idea for the book, the author, Paul French said “I was reading a rather dry and academic biography of the famous American journalist Edgar Snow who became well known in China in the 1930s. A small footnote stated that his neighbour had been Pamela Werner, a young English woman murdered in 1937 and whose killing was never solved. The footnote mentioned that Edgar’s wife Helen thought she might have been the real target of the killer and that Pamela’s father was a suspect as well as a notorious ‘sex cult’ run by a rather ragtag group dubious foreigners in Peking. That all rather grabbed my attention!! I went to sleep and in the morning Pamela was front and centre in my mind and I decided she was worth looking into – she’s stayed lodged in my brain ever since. (http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com.a...)

In the 75 years since the murder, Beijing has been transformed almost beyond recognition. I bet that ‘Badlands’ still exist, that the lines and boundaries between foreigners and Chinese are as powerful as they were and that vice bubbles along underneath the veneer of glitzy multi-storey buildings, of traffic jams, bulldozing of most of the hutongs and large freeways. French himself says: “Peking was a city concerned with appearances, a city that tried to smother scandal rather than reveling in it as Shanghai did. Shanghai lifted its skirt and flashed the goods to passersby; Peking was all fur coat and no knickers!! Peking was a city that always protected tradition, be it the foreign Legations or Chinese customs and manners from a previous era, while Shanghai embraced the modern with gusto…cinema, cars, radio, jazz, machine guns, heroin, fashion. Shanghai was all show, Peking all surface and so getting under that veneer of proprietary to the scandals that lay beneath and the resentments and crimes that festered was challenging.” (http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com.a...)

A reviewer in USA Today says of this book: “Bodies fall every day. What makes this one's tale worth telling, as Paul French does with a police procedural's efficiency in Midnight in Peking, is the songbird, that essential dose of cultural strangeness that can lift narratives of murder above the plainspoken fray of the true- crime genre….Almost inadvertently, however, the book offers a subtler idea: that the years before Pearl Harbor were the last time China would ever seem so immeasurably remote from Western life. By 1945 television, airplanes, and war had made Asia familiar. (books.usatoday.com/book/midnight-in-p...)

Like many books I’ve read this year, this is a piece of writing challenged by the need to bring an historical event alive. French seems quite scrupulous in terms of drawing only from the sources he has (which are extensive). He says: “Of course when dealing with real people, people who are long dead, it is frustrating. I talked to as many people as possible, I found as many pictures of them as possible, letters they wrote, interviews they gave, postcards they sent, diaries and notes they kept. However, it is hard to get people in their former living and breathing entirety – what they smelt like, their accents, their particular mannerisms and twitches that made them unique individuals. That is something I find frustrating. For instance a couple of people told me, and several others wrote, that Pamela’s rare grey eyes were quite entrancing, they were hard to look away from and were something very unique and special about her. But sadly none of the black and white photos of her are quite capable of capturing this feature that anyone who knew her saw and instantly recalled.”

This example (capturing the eyes) seems indicative of his struggle with the whole book – it doesn’t quite come to life in the way that the set-up indicates that it should (girl murdered in seedy badlands, war about to commence, corruption, tricky politics between the Chinese and the British, tricky police politics, young girl on the verge of adulthood, good girl or bad girl). I think I am more attracted to a narrative with greater authorial presence – such as you get when reading Helen Garner. This is a quibble though – it is an interesting story, especially when you can access the maps and photos of participants.(less)

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Oct 07, 2012 Roberta rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: true-crime

Pamela Werner lived in the storied Chinese city of Peking, on a street called Armour Factory Alley, with her father E.T. C. Werner, a retired consul and noted expert on Chinese language, history, and culture. In 1911, Werner had married Gladys Nina Ravenshaw, “a girl of the British Empire.” She was 22; he was 45.

In 1919, they adopted Pamela. Gladys lived a mere three years longer, dying at age 35 and leaving her three-year-old daughter in the care of her husband and various servants of the house...more Pamela Werner lived in the storied Chinese city of Peking, on a street called Armour Factory Alley, with her father E.T. C. Werner, a retired consul and noted expert on Chinese language, history, and culture. In 1911, Werner had married Gladys Nina Ravenshaw, “a girl of the British Empire.” She was 22; he was 45.

In 1919, they adopted Pamela. Gladys lived a mere three years longer, dying at age 35 and leaving her three-year-old daughter in the care of her husband and various servants of the household.

Paul French sets the stage for a tragedy by describing the strange and exotic world of prewar Peking, a place where men in traditional garb strolled the ancient avenues displaying their song birds in cages, Above the streets there loomed a sinister building known as the Fox Tower, a remnant of the walls that once encircled the city. The Chinese shunned this edifice, believing it to be inhabited by malign spirits. At night, it was populated by bats and wild dogs. It was here, in the early morning hours of January 8, 1937, in the vicinity of the Tower, that Pamela Werner’s body was first discovered:

When daylight broke on another freezing day, the tower was deserted once more. The colony of bats circled one last time before the creeping sun sent them back to their eaves. But in the icy wasteland between the road and the tower, the wild dogs–the huang gou–were prowling curiously, sniffing at something alongside a ditch.

It was the body of a young women, lying at an odd angle and covered by a layer of frost.

Paul French describes a murder scene that is acutely horrific. In terms of sheer savagery, it put me in mind of the victims of Jack the Ripper and also of the so-called Black Dahlia murder. I wasn’t prepared for that, and it nearly put me off the book altogether. But as often happens in such situations, there were sufficiently compelling reasons to read on, and so I did.

At the age of 19, Pamela Werner was still in school, yet at the same time she was on the brink of womanhood. A fluent speaker of Mandarin, she came and went from various venues in the city on her bicycle. She loved to go ice skating with her friends; in fact, this was the activity she was engaged in on the last night of her life. On that cold, dark evening, as Pamela prepared to cycle back home, one of those friends asked if she was scared to be making the trip all by herself. She responded:

‘I’ve been alone all my life….I am afraid of nothing–nothing! And besides, Peking is the safest city in the world.’

That last statement of course proved to be tragically wrong – at least it was, for Pamela Werner. But what of the first comment, about being alone all her life? At the time of her death, Pamela was just shy of twenty years of age. Her father was in his early seventies. Since the age of three, she’d had no mother.

My initial impression of E.T.C. Werner was that of a fusty old scholar only minimally concerned in the life of his sole offspring. And indeed, he may have enacted that part from time to time. But as Midnight in Peking ultimately reveals, there was a whole other side to the man. In the course of the investigation into Pamela’s murder, the seamy underbelly of expatriate life in the Chinese city had been exposed to considerably scrutiny. As a result, several possible suspects were identified, but there was never sufficient evidence to tie any of them definitively to the crime. Then, as the tides of history engulfed China, the murder of the young Englishwoman was relegated to the status of one of history’s footnotes. The case went cold. Everyone concerned seemed to give up on it, to be ready to forget about it. Everyone, that is, except her father, E.T.C. Werner.

The Guardian review of Midnight in Peking calls French’s account of the investigation ‘spellbinding.’ I agree completely. The whole book was spellbinding. Once I started it – and overcame my initial revulsion at the description of the crime scene – I could scarcely put it down.

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Sep 21, 2012 Phillip Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

A horrific crime, a collision of irreconcilably disparate cultures (Japan, China, English, Russian) living in close promixity to one another, a nostalgic setting (1920s Beijing) - that's a helluva treasure trove of content to build a book around. Paul French does not disappoint. He clearly did a tremendous amount of research, and it comes through in rich details that transport the reader. He throws up enough red herrings early on to keep you guessing as to whodunnit, before presenting the crime...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Albert rated it 4 of 5 stars

Midnight in Peking is much more than a true-life whodunit. It is at its core a social commentary on race relations and the need to save face despite the consequences in British society. A flaw that is mimicked by American society today.

It details the murder and probable rape, an act that due to the time period and poor forensics was not truly established of a young privileged British girl in Peking prior to the Japanese occupation. Pamela Werner is found mutilated at the base of the Fox Tower in...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a historical account of the murder of the daughter of a former British consul in Peking in the 1930s. The author traces the official murder investigation (which reached no conclusions) and the subsequent unofficial investigation by her father. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with French's recreation of a time and place that your average reader does no know much about. Like most of these kinds of works, the story itself gets a little thin at times, and the book can feel a bit re...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book because of the very human story it told. The author brought every puzzle piece, every emotion & every motive of all involved so close & i really gained an understanding of what might have been in the midst of this city with the big historical events as a backdrop. To be able to report on the big picture as well as the little picture is no small feat. To hear about a father never giving up his search for the killers of his daughter, against all odds, was inspiring. Pame...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Wolf rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Slow Start but a Compelling Exploration of Murder and a Lost World

Midnight in Peking examines the murder of a young British woman in 1930s China. Never officially solved, Paul French presents the official investigation and the enquiries that continued after the police had stopped asking questions. In the end, a plausible reconstruction of what might have happened is arrived at. The real interest lies in the world in which all this took place – Peking and China in the late 1930s.

Other, similar,...more Slow Start but a Compelling Exploration of Murder and a Lost World

Midnight in Peking examines the murder of a young British woman in 1930s China. Never officially solved, Paul French presents the official investigation and the enquiries that continued after the police had stopped asking questions. In the end, a plausible reconstruction of what might have happened is arrived at. The real interest lies in the world in which all this took place – Peking and China in the late 1930s.

Other, similar, books (recently, perhaps, ‘Mr Briggs’ Hat’ and ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher’) have relied on the fact that the past is a foreign country, in terms of both the society and the legal system, to broaden their palate from a simple recitation of the facts of a true crime story. The focus of this book looks at a world removed from ours by time, culture and place. The result is at times more like something from a fantasy novel than anything else. Peking at that time, with its foreign colonial quarter, traditional Chinese streets and – in between – lawless near shantytown Badlands, where every form of vice was available for money, was an extraordinary city. Its different elements often rubbed shoulders but rarely fully mixed. Here old Chinese men take their song birds for walks in the early morning and an animistic belief in spirits ensures certain parts of the city are deserted at night, stateless White Russian entertainers and prostitutes ply for trade and the machinery of modern warfare – in the shape of Japanese soldiers – all coexist. In one section we are introduced to a hermaphrodite Russian cabaret performer and, it would seem, daring criminal, who operated as both a man and a very attractive woman: we appear almost to have crossed the line into fantasy or pulp fiction.

There are issues with the book – it is not perfect. The major characters and protagonists of the tale, from Pamela, the murdered girl, to her father, to the investigating officers, never wholly emerge as rounded people: facts about them and biographies are presented, but the spark of life is missing. This may well stem from Paul French’s writing style – it is workmanlike, journalistic, sometimes obvious, even clichéd (no surprise that The Times is said to ‘thunder’).

Those two factors together probably explain why the start of this book seems rather slow and leaden. Stay with it, however. Somewhere, about a third of the way in, I realised that this story was gripping, leading me down the dark alleyways of an utterly lost – but fascinating – world.
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Jun 21, 2012 Jann Barber rated it 3 of 5 stars

In the early hours of January 8, 1937, the mutilated body of a young woman was discovered at the base of Fox Tower in Peking. At a time when China was dealing with threats from Japan, the discovery of Pamela Werner's body seemed to represent the changes that were to come.

Paul French takes what is known of this heinous crime and leads the reader on a disheartening tour of how government and politics can thwart the search for justice.

Pamela's adopted father, E.T.C. Werner, was a reclusive, yet res...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Cheryl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-nonfiction, true-crime

Early in the afternoon of January 7, 1937, Pamela Werner, nineteen year old daughter of the former British Consul in Peking, told her father that she was going out to meet a friend and go ice skating. The rink was located in the area of Peking that was inhabited exclusively by diplomats and ex pats from various countries. The next morning Pamela's horrifically mutilated body was found at the foot of the mysterious Fox Tower. Two detectives -- one Chinese and one British were assigned to the case...more

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May 24, 2012 Brown.carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Midnight in Peking is Paul French's account of the investigation into the brutal murder of Pamela Werner.
In 1937 Peking was still reeling from the ongoing turmoil caused by the Japanese invaders in the north of China and the many warlords who had come and gone in the preceding years. Pamela failed to return home one evening and her badly mutilated body was found the following morning. British Detective Chief Inspector Richard Dennis was sent from Tientsin to assist Chinese Colonel Han Shih-chin...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Cheryl rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have read several nonfiction books recently and they really intrigued me into checking this genre out more. That is why I wanted to check out Midnight in Peking. I thought the unsolved murder of a young Pamela Werner sounded intriguing. I was not the only one as Mr. French was also intrigued by Pamela’s story and felt that he wanted to research her story himself and see if he could once again give Pamela a voice.

Pamela was the daughter of E.T.C. Werner, a former British consul at Foochow. Bac...more

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Jan 03, 2013 R. Andrew Lamonica rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a great story in need of a better writer. Midnight in Peking tells a fascinating and ponderous tale from a turning point in the history of China (and the world). It is a quick read and the details about 1937 China were enough to keep me enthralled for the first 2/3 of the book. Unfortunately, the writing style leaves a lot to be desired.

The first 2/3 of the book read like a real-time police-procedural in the alternate-universe that was 1937 Peking (Beijing). Then, the book shifts to the...more

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About Paul French

Paul French is the Chief China Representative of Access Asia, a market research and business intelligence company specialising in China and North Asia's economics and markets. He was educated in London and at the University of Glasgow. He is the co-author of One Billion Shoppers - Accessing Asia's Consuming Passions (1998) and author of Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adve...more

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