Valley of Gentians Book

It’s a wonder that the detectives and constables of the Yellowthread Street Constabulary, Hong Bay District, Hong Kong, solve any cases at all. Especially when you consider that their cases are the stuff that nightmares are made of, at least nightmares of sleeping policemen – dismembered inhabitants of coffins used to transport…something out of China, incendiary mail bags investigated by undercover officers afflicted with delusions of Holmes and Watson, fem fatales from the Chinese Secret Service quoting Thoreau over the phone, endangered butterfly wings and dangerous postcards, stealthy killer soldiers stealing from the dead while confronting ghosts and demons, and all the history of Colonial Britain and Communist China intersecting each other on the constabulary’s doorstep. And yet they do solve their cases, gloriously, heroically, and in ways that saner folk would never attempt. Hong Bay has also about it a surreal and nightmarish quality, as if it exists in a dreamland just on the border of the real world Hong Kong. Adding to that feeling is Marshall’s lyrical narrative and idiosyncratic dialogue, almost as if he is pulling us, not through a novel, but an epic poem in narrative form. Yet another great tale from this sadly departed master of the genre.