Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz

I see this book as a tribute to Agatha Christie. It consists of two stories. The first one could be considered as a book within a book, a detective story about 2-3 murders. The detective was a survivor from German concentration camp, a dying man named Atticus Pund. If Sherlock Holmes has Dr Watson and Hercule Poirot has Arthur Hastings, Atticus Pund has James Fraser. In this story, a young woman came to ask the detective's help to clear her fiance's name. The boy had been accused of murdering his own mother, a housekeeper in Pye Hall. At first Pund didn't want to take her case, until when he read a news about another murder in the same house, where the owner of the Pye Hall had been found decapitated. Were the two murders related?

The 2nd story tells about the publishing house who had published 8 books of the Atticus Pund series by Alan Conway. The last book, called Magpie Murders, was missing the last chapters, where the conclusion was, where Atticus Pund told the readers who the killer was. The heroine in this part of the story was the editor, Susan Ryeland. Susan had been given the 9th book (also the last) of the series by the publisher, the CEO of the Cloverleaf Books, Charles Clover; but it lacked the last chapters. Meanwhile, the author, Alan Conway, had been dead. It had been said that he had committed suicide by throwing himself from the tower of his castle. Susan believed that Alan Conway had been murdered, so she started her own investigation to solve the mystery of the murder and to find the missing chapters.

I quite enjoy the book and thinks that the idea of this book was good. However I found the reason behind Alan Conway's murder was silly.

Violent Crimes - Phillip Margolin

Having read Phillip Margolin's books before, I was eager to read this one. It was an easy and quick read and I finished it in 2 nights. However I read this book right after I finished Huang Yi's A Step Into The Past and compared to Huang Yi's work, Violent Crimes was quite disappointing. It's a far cry from Gone But Not Forgotten.

I supposed this book was okay if someone wanted to make it into a blockbuster movie. There was nothing new in the plot. The heroine, Amanda Jaffe, was a lawyer who tries to free her 2 innocent clients, one was accused of brutal murders - and the other one had admitted to killing his own father.

A Step Into The Past (book) - Huang Yi

It took me more than 3 months to finish this book. I am not sure if there is a copyrighted English translation, but this one I read was available at internet, translated by several volunteers. (Thanks to you all!) I converted it to .epub format contained 2850+ pages.

The author, Huang Yi, was fond of science fiction – and wrote very thick books. I know 3 of his books have been made into TV series, including this one, with Raymond Lam in all of them. [The other two are: 'Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion' and 'A Pair of Dragons in Tang Dinasty'/'Twin of Brothers'.]

When I was reading about a hundred pages I began to regret what I was doing, realizing it would take months to finish the book. It was because I had many books to read. I had that same feeling when I was reading Romance of Three Kingdoms. A Step Into The Past, however, was more interesting and attractive to read, and after finishing the book, I was satisfied with how it ended and glad that I spent some time to read it. It is definitely one of the best historical fictions I have ever read.

The main character was a 20 year old elite soldier, a member of a task force, named Xiang Shao-long. He was sent with a time machine to the warring states era. He was supposed to land in the year when Qin Shi-huang, the first emperor of Qin, who united 7 states in China, ascended the throne, in 246 B.C.  But he landed 5 years earlier.

So the story in this book spans 5 years, from the time when Xiang Shao-long arrived in the warring states era, until when Qin Shi-huang ascended the throne. We see the development in Xiang Shao-long’s character, especially in the field of love. When he first arrived he was a lecher and would sleep around, but after the ones he loved died one by one, he then took the matter of love seriously.  From a troublemaker in the 21th century, in a few years Xiang Shao-long became the Great General of Qin and was respected by many.

With his background and knowledge from the 21th century, it was easy for him to impress people and also to win the heart and hands of the most beautiful ladies in that era. We also see how he met and interacted with famous and important people, the one most interesting was with Ying Zheng, the Qin Shi-huang. There were some twists, of course, and the moral lesson is: It is the winner who writes (or re-writes) history.

In the 2001 TV series version, Xiang Shao-long was given a sort of disc, a tool that could make him return to the 21th century. He did tried to return to the 21th century, although actually from the start we knew that in the end he didn’t, because in the beginning of episode 1, the disc was found in the ancient grave with the terracotta soldiers. In the book, we know clearly that he could not return because right after he had been sent to the warring states era, the time machine and the laboratory were blown to pieces.

Xiang Shao-long had one son, Xiang Bao-er; who would later became the famous Chu general: Xiang Yu. Bao-er was actually the 2^nd son of Teng Yi, one of Xiang Shaolong’s sworn brothers. Perhaps due to time machine radiation, Xiang Shao-long could not impregnate his wives; so Teng Yi gave him his 2^nd son.