In Peter May"s first novel, The Firemaker, Chinese homicide cop Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret saved the world from deadly GM rice and fell briefly in love before the authorities parted them. When the fourth of a series of ritualised beheadings involves an American citizen, Margaret finds herself obliged all over again to work with Li Yan, whom she despises for choosing his job over her; and of course neither of them find the situation easy.She was shocked by how Chinese he looked. When she had been with him almost every waking hour, she had ceased completely to see him as Chinese. He was just Li Yan, who touched her with a gentleness she had not known before in a man, whose eyes were soft and dark and full of humour and life ... Now all that familiarity was gone ... All she really felt towards him now was anger.Complications outside the case involve the pursuit of Margaret by Michael, a glamorous television archaeologist, and the dumping of an unwanted daughter on Li Yan by his illegally pregnant sister while the case itself turns out to involve memories of a past everyone would rather forget. All of the victims were at the same high school in the sixties, and the first three were leaders of a group of Red Guards who drove teachers to humiliation and death. May is particularly good on the different ways in which that period"s perpetrators and victims, often the same people, live with that past...This is an impressive and ingenious second novel--May is equally at home with investigation and with the lived experience of today"s Beijing. --Roz Kaveney