This book starts its journey with BookCrossing from Delphi, Greece
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" The Monkey and The Tiger includes two detective stories, "The Morning of the Monkey" and "The Night of the Tiger." In the first, a gibbon drops an emerald in the open gallery of Dee's official residence, leading the judge to discover a strangely mutilated body in the woods—and how it got there. In the second, Dee is traveling to the imperial capital to assume a new position when he is separated from his escort by a flood. Marooned in a large country house surrounded by fierce bandits, Dee confronts an apparition that helps him solve a mystery. "


~~~~~~To the person who found this book:~~~~~~

Welcome to BookCrossing.com, where we are trying to make the whole world a library!

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This book is now yours, and you can keep it if you choose, although I would love you to read and then share it. You can pass it on someone you know or release it once again in the wild, leaving it on a park bench, a phone booth, a hostel lobby...wherever you think it's suitable for the book to continue it's journey. If you pass it along, please make a release note to let others know where you left it.

I hope you enjoy the book!

I've read a couple of other books by this author and found them all fine as light entertainment, but they are kind of "naive" and it's not that hard to guess some plot elements. This one is not an exception. When reading books set centuries ago, you have to accept that ethics and customs were different, so there are some violent practices and the different way they treated women and people on the lower layers of social scale etc. But other than that, I think you could call the Judge Dee mysteries light, cosy mysteries. A genre that usually doesn't suit me much to be honest, but I find these ones alright.
This book features two different little stories and it's easy to finish it in a few hours. Far fetched and naive on the detective part and on some plot elements, but pleasant to read.

The most interesting trait of this series, at least to me, is the "exotic" setting. The sleuth is a 7th century official, based on a real historical person, who became legendary in China during the centuries and starred on various Chinese detective stories during the years.

The author lived an interesting life his self and had a deep interest and knowledge of the Far East, its history, arts, earlier literature works and culture. Based on this feedback, he created his own amagalm of stories, starring Dee, taking place on the 7th century, but featuring a setting with elements of many different eras in Chinese history and occasionally twisting the Chinese tradition to suit a Western audience. Bearing in mind the fact that he wrote on the 1950s, his texts might be influenced a bit of the ideas of this time period too.

If this is a new series to you or if you've spontaneously read other books in the series, no need to worry. Each story more or less stands alone fine.

A decent slim book to pass the time!

The Monkey and The Tiger got itchy feet and want to trot the globe. So for a start off to New Zealand they go, to meet the winner of the Export an Animal sweepstakes Nov-Dec '22. And then... Who knows?

Good Luck and Don't forget to write your news from time to time!

Received today in a bundle.

Released while using up the train ticket. Same line as Pompeii.