As Van Gulik explains in his afterwards, Judge Dee is a real historical person who lived from A.D. He served throughout Asia in the Dutch Diplomatic service and married a Chinese woman, so few people would be so ideally positioned to write works based on Chinese culture for Western audiences. Van Gulik was raised in East Asia from early childhood and tutored in Mandarin from an early age. This is an enjoyable book, but I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries. Judge Dee also did a little vigilante justice now and then, lightening a charge for someone who made a bad choice but wasn't a bad person, and in one case blackmailing someone who wasn't actually guilty - of _that_ crime, at least - into aiding a victim. Mostly murders of various sorts, with motives ranging from covering up a crime to jealousy (though none of them were truly crimes of passion, they were all premeditated to one extent or another). Still, I dislike know-it-all detectives (I don't like Sherlock Holmes, either), and while the setting is unusual it's not one that interests me.

van Gulik is pretty good at seeding the information - there were only a couple stories where the answer depended on something I totally hadn't seen in the story, and several where I recognized what the clue was as soon as he began giving the answer. Mildly interesting mysteries, a lot of information about early Chinese culture (if it's accurate) but I'm not much interested in the subject, and a know-it-all detective.

The Emperor's Pearl by Robert van Gulik