A History Book Club Selection

"Compelling . . . reads like a medieval whodunit."
--The Wall Street Journal

"A fascinating, beautiful book."
--The Washington Times

"Near-cinematic suspense . . . Spence's depiction of the investigation is mesmerizing."
--Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"An infectiously readable narrative . . . on par with bestselling works of historical reconstruction such as Dava Sobel's Longitude . . . Eighteenth-century China springs to life."
--The Dallas Morning News

"A slice of history told in the lively manner of a novel . . . A novel of ideas."
--Ian Buruma, The New York Times Book Review

"[A] fascinating detective story."
--The New Yorker

"A work of history that pulses with emotion, with vital characters re-created vividly, with complex situations lucidly unraveled, with irony underscored. His straight forward prose style and use of the historic present give his work an engrossing immediacy. It is history of the best kind."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A delicate spider's web of a book, deft, fascinating, and precise as Chinese calligraphy."
--The Los Angeles Times