The Speaker of Mandarin

While holidaying in China, Inspector Reginald Wexford was haunted by a couple of mysterious occurrences, namely an old woman with bound feet who appeared to be following him from one city to another, and a man's drowning. On returning home he's tasked with investigating the murder of a tourist and realises that this death relates to his experiences abroad.

The reviewer for Kirkus Reviews said of the book that it was: "Less tight and polished than Death Notes, with a ho-hum fadeout — but a disarming, fairly irresistible blend of mini-puzzles, solid detection, splendid travel writing, and Wexford charm."[1]

"The Passing Tramp", a pseudonymous blogger who's written and contributed to several publications on the subject of mystery fiction (including Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel,[2] under the name Curtis Evans), observed the relationship of Rendell's plot with old English tales of supernatural menace (remarking that she wrote the introduction to a book of M. R. James ghost stories). It also contains the drowning of a boat passenger, an element reminiscent of "certain classic Thirties [sic] mysteries by Agatha Christie."[3]

The review mentions the dated caricaturing of a Chinese tour guide near the start of the novel ("He would have given a good deal to have been rid of baby-faced, pink-cheeked, slant-eyed Mr. Sung," writes Rendell of Wexford on the second page"), but mentions that these appear in "just a scant few pages where this occurs, right at the beginning, and it could easily be edited by modern publishers; [and] in truth all of the Chinese characters in the story are window dressing." The review goes on to mention Rendell's East Asian heritage.