Charles Mossop was born and brought up in the United Kingdom, apart from seven years spent in Canada as a youngster. After finishing secondary school in Britain, he returned to Canada where he obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in Cultural Anthropology with a specialization in Oriental Studies. After spending further time in the United Kingdom, he made his permanent home in Canada where he pursued a lengthy career in post-secondary education and international development. Now retired and living on Vancouver Island on Canada’s west coast, he divides his time between writing the historical fiction he loves, motivational speaking, and music. Legally blind since the age of nineteen, Charles is also an active leadership volunteer with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Canadian Council of the Blind, and the World Blind Union, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to improving the lives of people throughout the world who are blind or partially sighted.
CLICK BOOK COVERS TO PURCHASE BOOKS
A series of murder mysteries set in Ming Dynasty China. The protagonist is Lin Jiang, a gentleman scholar, poet, staunch follower of the precepts of Confucius, and chief magistrate for the city of Xiaolong in Fujian Province. With the able assistance of his manservant, Chen Ping, Lin investigates and solves these mysteries, bringing criminals, both high- and low-born, to justice.
Abruptly roused from his prosaic existence as a small-town magistrate in Ming Dynasty China, Lin Jiang is summoned to the house of Lord Chang Da, an extremely wealthy landowner and cousin of the emperor. To Lin’s consternation, the crime he is asked to investigate is the supposedly deliberate killing of Chang Da’s pet songbird.
Honor-bound to undertake the task, Lin soon discovers there is much more at stake in the great family of Chang. With the help of his trusty manservant Chen Ping, who himself has a dark connection to the House of Chang, Lin sets about discovering the truth. In so doing, he lays bare a tangled story of illicit love, jealousy, fraternal rivalry, and violent death.
When a young archeologist is shot to death, his uncle, Detective Inspector William “Bill” Foy, comes out of retirement to help the London Metropolitan Police track down his killer. Foy’s investigation, deeply resented by his immediate superior officer, first concentrates on an artifact, an oracle bone, from China’s Bronze Age, which he believes holds the key to the homicide, but much more turns out to be at stake. Foy soon finds himself faced with untangling a complex web of murder, corruption, art theft, and smuggling. With the help of his two young assistants and an Oxford professor, Foy follows the history of the oracle bone and uncovers a ruthless international criminal organization whose origins are traced back to the cataclysmic collapse of Nazi Germany.
Characters Jump off the Page-A Wild Ride
Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2021