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Hurtles along from one cliffhanger to the next'  Spectator  Peking, 1937:  The teenage daughter of a British consul is brutally slaughtered. The police investigation is botched; as war looms British and Chinese authorities close ranks. A grieving father vows to uncover the truth - alone.  Seventy-five years later, historian Paul French uncovers a stash of forgotten documents revealing the killer's identity . . .  For those who loved The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil this is a riveting and evocative true crime classic.  'Gripping, spellbinding . . . drawing the reader from the very first pages into an unwholesome, macabre world'  Guardian  'Part historical docudrama, part tragic opera . . . it is French's enormous achievement that he pieces together the puzzle. He tells this tale with the skill of an Agatha Christie'  Financial Times  'Fascinating and irresistible. 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On a frozen morning in January 1937, in the dying days of colonial Peking, a body was found under the haunted watchtower. It was Pamela Werner, the teenage daughter of the city's former British consul ETC Werner. Her heart had been removed.  A horrified world followed the hunt for Pamela's killer, with a Chinese-British detective team pursuing suspects including a blood-soaked rickshaw puller, the Triads, and a lascivious grammar school headmaster. But the case was soon forgotten amid the carnage of the Japanese invasion... by all but ETC Werner. With a network of private investigators and informers, he followed the trail deep into Peking's notorious Badlands and back to the gilded hotels of the colonial Quarter.  Some 75 years later, deep in the Scotland Yard archives, British historian Paul French accidentally came across the lost case file prepared by ETC Werner. 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