Judge Dee and his helpers investigate a series of murders despite pressure to solve them quickly.

In the fourth installment of Robert Van Gulik's ancient Chinese mystery series based on historical court records, detective Judge Dee is appointed to the magistrate of Pei-chow -- a distant frontier district in the barren north of the ancient Chinese Empire. It is here that he is faced with three strange and disturbing crimes: the theft of precious jewels, the disappearance of a girl in love, and the fiendish murder involving the nude, headless body of a woman. And even more curious, the crimes seem to be linked together by clues from a popular game of the period, the Seven Board. "A delight to the connoisseur" (San Francisco Chronicle), The Chinese Nail Murders was first published in the 1950s. Timeless and exotic, it is now reissued by Perennial and includes charming illustrations and an epilogue that details the origins of each case and how the author discovered them.

The last of the Judge Dee series. Judge Dee is a 7th century magistrate/detective who always has three crimes to solve. In the first, a headless body is found; in the second, a poisoning occurs; and finally a cotton-maker is killed.

In the third installment of Robert Van Gulik's classic ancient Chinese mystery series based on historical court records, magistrate, lawyer, and detective Judge Dee has his work cut out for him. Set in 666 A.D., in the hidden city of Han-yuan, sixty miles from the imperial capital of ancient China, Dee is sent to investigate a case of embezzlement of government funds. But things are about to get more complicated for the great detective. Just before he is about to take leave of Han-yuan, the popular courtesan Almond Blossom disappears, and then a bride who dies on her wedding night also disappears from her coffin -- her body replaced with that of a murdered man. To make matters worse, Judge Dee is confronted with the dangerous sect called the White Lotus.