City of Ink, Elsa Hart
City of Ink, Elsa Hart
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

City of Ink
A Mystery

Author: Elsa Hart

Narrator: David Shih

Unabridged: 12 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/21/2018


Synopsis

Following the enthralling 18th century Chinese mysteries Jade Dragon Mountain and White Mirror, comes Elsa Hart's next Li Du adventure in City of Ink.

Li Du was prepared to travel anywhere in the world except for one place: home. But to unravel the mystery that surrounds his mentor’s execution, that’s exactly where he must go.

Plunged into the painful memories and teeming streets of Beijing, Li Du obtains a humble clerkship that offers anonymity and access to the records he needs. He is beginning to make progress when his search for answers buried in the past is interrupted by murder in the present.

The wife of a local factory owner is found dead, along with a man who appears to have been her lover, and the most likely suspect is the husband. But what Li Du’s superiors at the North Borough Office are willing to accept as a crime of passion strikes Li Du as something more calculated. As past and present intertwine, Li Du’s investigations reveal that many of Beijing’s residents — foreign and Chinese, artisan and official, scholar and soldier — have secrets they would kill to protect.

When the threats begin, Li Du must decide how much he is willing to sacrifice to discover the truth in a city bent on concealing it, a city where the stroke of a brush on paper can alter the past, change the future, prolong a life, or end one.

Praise for City of Ink:

"As always, Hart excels at making even walk-on characters fully realized and at combining a gripping whodunit plot with a vivid evocation of the period. This entry solidifies her status as a top-notch historical mystery author." — Publishers Weekly

"Rich in period detail, a sharply rendered exotic setting, and a web of well-crafted plots, Li Du’s third novel will appeal to fans of historical mysteries by Lisa See, Laura Joh Rowland, and Abir Mukherjee." — Booklist

About Elsa Hart

Elsa Hart is the author of several acclaimed mystery novels set in eighteenth-century China, including City of Ink, one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2018. She was born in Rome, but her earliest memories are of Moscow, where her family lived until 1991. Since then she has lived in the Czech Republic, the U.S.A., and China. She earned a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.


Reviews

In Elsa Hart’s City of Ink, we renew our acquaintance with Li Du, the scholar and former Imperial librarian who, having saved the life of the Emperor, has been allowed back to China’s capitol. That was covered in Jade Dragon Mountain. Thanks to the generosity of Net Galley, I now have the opportunit......more

Goodreads review by Skip on April 25, 2020

For those folks that read to be transported to a place and time, this book will be right up your alley. Author Elsa Hart does an admirable job describing 18th century Beijing. In the third book of this series, protagonist scholar Li Du has returned to Beijing where he would is a district office as a......more

Goodreads review by Shomeret on July 21, 2018

The publisher approved me for City of Ink on Net Galley because I had reviewed the first novel of the Li Du mystery series, Jade Dragon Mountain. When I received this third novel, I realized that I should have gotten seven lashes with a wet Chinese noodle for neglecting to read the second book in th......more

Goodreads review by Eilonwy on May 21, 2021

Li Du, former royal librarian and former exile, has returned to Beijing, but not to his beloved library. Instead, he’s working as a clerk in the giant imperial bureaucracy. When his superior is called to investigate a double murder, Li Du goes along to take notes. He is convinced that the deaths......more


Awards

  • Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year