GULIK, Robert van (author and illustrator). The Haunted Monastery. London: Heinemann. 1963.
8vo. Publisher’s soft green card covers lettered to front cover and spine, endpapers reproducing map of the monastery by the author; pp. [ii], vii, [1 blank], 159, [3], with 9 illustrations by the author; creasing to front cover and spine, head of spine chipped, light toning, slight spotting to the lower corners of the first few leaves and to the edges of the text block, otherwise internally clean; very good.
Uncorrected proof copy of the seventh novel in the Judge Dee series.
Forced to seek shelter from a violent storm, Judge Dee takes refuge in the Monastery of the Morning Clouds, a place already burdened by a sinister reputation. Three women had been murdered there the previous year, and the monastery remains a forbidding and oppressive setting. In keeping with the conventions of traditional Chinese crime fiction, Judge Dee must unravel three interlinked cases.
Judge Dee is a fictionalised version of the Tang-dynasty magistrate Di Renjie (seventh century). Van Gulik first encountered the character while translating the eighteenth-century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An (1949), an experience which inspired him to create his own Judge Dee stories. The series was published between 1949 and 1967. A Dutch diplomat and accomplished sinologist, Van Gulik consistently incorporated his scholarly research into his fiction and illustrated his novels himself, adopting a distinctive woodblock-inspired style.
Evers, p. 55.
SKU: 2122639