Review: A Gentleman's Murder

A Gentleman's Murder by Christopher Huang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The library had the sequel to this book on display since it was published in the last month or two, and I was able to order not only the two Eric Peterkin mysteries, but also Huang's other standalone story as well. However, as Huang's first book, this is the one I read first, the debut of Eric Peterkin - a unique kind of amateur detective in the Golden Age of mysteries, late of the British military from the days of the Great War, hailing from a long line of English soldiers while also carrying the legacy of his Chinese mother - and naturally, strongly disliking the open anti-Asian racist sentiments of the time. 

Interestingly, in his lengthy author's note at the end, Huang brings up the ten rules of Ronald Knox and gives a much more charitable interpretation of Rule #5 - having first heard about these rules from Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, where Stevenson refused to even quote that rule due to its use of a term seen today as an unacceptable ethnic slur, I assumed that Knox must have had racist intent in that particular rule. Huang, however, asserts that Knox's rule was specifically written to challenge the prevalent anti-Asian stereotypes of the time, and having read this novel and its sharp critiques of 1920s race relations, I think I understand exactly where he's coming from.

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