Midnight in Peking, the year is 1937 Pamela Werner's body is found near The Fox Tower on a piece of no mans land. This is a time when Peking is being closed in upon by the Japanese, many Westerners are leaving if they can, many can't as they are the flotsam and jetsam who have left Europe over the last decades, many being white Russians, add this to fortune hunters, diplomats and a very free life style, an underworld of opium and you have a true mystery.
Two detectives investigate the crime, a British detective Dennis and a Chinese detective Han. It has shocked the elite enclaved mostly European community. Who could do such a shocking thing a madman? Must be a Chinese person or could it be one of their own?
These are the questions that haunt the detectives, but as time goes on one can see there is a lot of politics and payoffs involved. This true story is revisited by Paul French and he does a great job, unearthing and reading through all the correspondence that Pamela's father sent to the foreign office in London after he did his own investigation. You can come to some very compelling conclusions as to who did it, and why.
It's a great insight into Peking on the cuspid of WWII, but so sad that a teenage girls life should end like that.
Full Body Burden. Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats. This is also a true story of Kristen Iversen, who lived in a wonderful new housing development built yes withing a hairs breath of Rocky Flats.
Just the name itself Rocky Flat is something you think now where have I heard that? I can't say I read the whole book because it became very detailed in statistics, but I found the beginning very compelling and read quite a bit.
Did you know that the third worst nuclear disaster happened back in the fifties at Rocky Flats and was not equaled until more recently by Chernobyl and the Fukushima nuclear disaster that just happened in Japan. That was kept under wraps and only providence of the wind blowing in the other direction stopped the whole of Denver, Colorado from being contaminated. Of course one could ask who was contaminated then?
A compelling book to read and probably if I had more time I would read the entire book. The perfect suburbia of the 1950s gone awry. People becoming ill and not knowing why, it's all so new and what do they actually do at that plant, the government would never let us live here or build here if it wasn't safe!
Yes the people of 2012 are less trusting or are we?
I may come back and finish this book at some point, it makes you think.
Christy
