Peter May's very readable Chinese series continues with detective Li Yan back in Beijing accompanied by, although not legally living with, his pregnant American fiancée Margaret Campbell. Usefully, she's a pathologist -- frowned upon by the Chinese authorities but dragged into Li's latest case when it appears to concern the highly sophisticated doping of top Chinese athletes. Campbell's skills are needed for the same reason Li's are: Olympic athletes are dying -- and their deaths are being made to look accidental. The story tracks a somewhat predictable course towards the perpetrator, but far more interestingly gives an absorbing and well informed account of Beijing life today and the inside workings of the Chinese police. While the case puzzles the Chinese, they find the deaths less strange than Li's determination to wed a foreigner. The embattled couple face implacable opposition while at the same time they raise the ire of highly placed -- and perhaps closely placed? -- Chinese villains. Doping, Triads, high-level corruption and a heroine eight months pregnant. What more could you ask? Only an imminent wedding, with the hostile parents-in-law meeting for the first time. Far from a dim sum, this fare turns out quite piquant.
