Imperial Purple

Liz Williams
Snake Agent
Night Shade Books 2008 (original edition 2005)

Inspector Chen is a police detective in "Singapore Three" - one of a series of artificial islands. His special responsibility is for crimes involving the supernatural and for liaison with Hell. His wife is a demon who has a pet badger-spirit disguised as a teapot.

Young girls are dying and their spirits are not ending up in Heaven as they should be but are cropping up in some very strange places in Hell.

Enter Zhu Irzh, a demon officer with Hell’s Vice Squad. Some influential characters in Hell have caused him to stop promoting vice and work out what is going on with these young girls. He and Chen must work together and fight their way through the labyrinthine bureaucracies of Hell and back.

I enjoyed this book in parts. Williams’ vision of Hell as warring bureaucracies of mind-boggling inefficiency is entertaining and amusing. The ill-matched buddy story of Chen and Zhu Irzh works quite well also.

However, I wasn’t completely convinced by the Chinese cultural aspect although I am no expert here. The sinister demon hunter didn’t really go anywhere and in any case lost a certain credibility when the teapot bit his ankle and Chen’s wife pushed him into the harbour.

The supernatural part had a slightly pasted-on feel. The story could pretty much have been the same if we were talking the criminal underworld rather than the demonic one although the chrome would have been different. Substitute kidnapping for spirit-stealing, rival gangs for rival bureaucracies, weapons and lockpicks for magic and there you are.

Nevertheless not a bad read for train, plane or rainy day. Williams has written lots of other stuff since this book was first published in 2005 and I suspect that subsequent Inspector Chen outings will be better. I’d certainly give them a try. Three stars.