The Phantom of the Temple: A Judge Dee Mystery - Paperback

by Robert Van Gulik (Author)

Judge Dee presided over his imperial Chinese court with a unique brand of Confucian justice. A near mythic figure in China, he distinguished himself as a tribunal magistrate, inquisitor, and public avenger. Long after his death, accounts of his exploits were celebrated in Chinese folklore, and later immortalized by Robert van Gulik in his electrifying mysteries.

In The Phantom of the Temple, three separate puzzles--the disappearance of a wealthy merchant's daughter, twenty missing bars of gold, and a decapitated corpse--are pieced together by the clever judge to solve three murders and one complex, gruesome plot.

"Judge Dee belongs in that select group of fictional detectives headed by the renowned Sherlock Holmes. I assure you it is a compliment not given frivolously."--Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
Robert Van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. He drew his plots from the whole body of Chinese literature, especially from the popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century.

Back Jacket

On a wooded hill in the Lan-fang district, a phantom stalks in a century-old Buddhist temple and three mysteries unfold - the vanishing of a wealthy merchant's daughter, the disappearance of twenty bars of gold, and the discovery of a decapitated corpse. In The Phantom of the Temple, the clever Judge Dee pieces together these strange occurrences to reveal one complex and gruesome plot.

Author Biography

Robert van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. His many works include sixteen Judge Dee mysteries, a study of the gibbon in China, and two books on the Chinese lute.