The Prison Tangram

The Prison Tangram

Most murder mystery novels operate by a standard forumla, but The Prison Tangram by Claire Huot is a genre-defying, hip and savvy offering. A rookie Caucasian detective, Rey Pirelli, who had spent most of her formative years in Beijing and speaks fluent mandarin, is given a puzzling first case. Two female inmates at an experimental and progressive women’s detention centre are found dead on Easter morning, bodies positioned identically in separate cells. It is Detective Pirelli’s task to solve the case within two weeks amidst a thicket of police and corporate politics, mysterious packages, and cryptic suspects. The connection between the two dead inmates is China. May Ho is a cynical Chinese intellectual and Elizabeth Rich is a former acupressure specialist obsessed with learning Chinese calligraphy as a self-improvement project to outpace her own simple upbringing and the guilt of committing infanticide. Detective Pirelli must ascertain the cause of death. Was it murder or suicide?

Huot’s prose holds plenty of Easter eggs for the more cultivated literary aesthete, but remains entirely accessible to a wider audience. The slow unfolding of clues become feints, and the enigma of the case does not tend toward typical resolution. The characters are portrayed with refreshing depth and realism, with all the quirks and tics expertly crafted. Huot succeeds in demonstrating the inconsistency of our inner life without undue dramatization, all within the envelope of a riveting tale.

--Kane X. Faucher
Scene Magazine - Feb 2008