The China Thrillers Books

Margaret Campbell, a Chicago forensic pathologist, has been invited by the Chinese government to teach at the Beijing police university. She has accepted the six-week assignment with misgivings but is desperate to escape a troubled life in America. Arriving in Beijing, she checks “nothing to declare” on the health declaration they gave her on the plane---nothing, that is, “except a broken heart and a wasted life, neither of which was contagious.” She gets off to a bad start when her car knocks senior detective Li Yan off his bicycle. In a furious clash, he dresses her down in perfect English. But Li soon finds himself reintroduced to Margaret by his superiors when the newly promoted detective’s first case requires Margaret’s special expertise to identify a horribly burned corpse. Thrown together to track down the killer, Margaret and Li must bury their personal and cultural differences when they uncover a conspiracy that threatens not only their lives, but the lives of millions.

Margaret Campbell had finally decided to leave Beijing---and the man she loved---and return home to the States. She had first come to Beijing to conduct a seminar on her specialty, forensic pathology, for the city's police. The invitation turned out to ask for more than she expected; she was thrust into the search for a murderer. This was how she met and came to fall in love with the Beijing police detective Li Yan. Although they began as enemies, the attraction between them was overwhelming---until personal tragedies pulled them apart. Now the police need an answer to a series of gruesome murders. Four men have been killed; the first three were Chinese and the fourth man was born in China but became an American in his youth. All were victims of what looks like ritual sacrifices. The U.S. ambassador practically forces Margaret to work once more with Li Yan. She buries her pain and turns to a new admirer for her free time---an American archaeologist who is making a television documentary. As Margaret and Li Yan investigate, they come closer and closer to finding the truth behind the killer's executions. They also come closer to a killer who will sacrifice anyone to conceal a secret. This second in the China Thriller series is another testament to Peter May's ability to write captivating characters that move stealthily through Beijing's vibrant and dangerous setting.

Peter May’s thrilling new China novel brings together Beijing detective Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret Campbell for the third time. When the mutilated and dismembered bodies of eighteen women are discovered in a mass grave in Shanghai, Li is sent to establish if the corpses are related to an unsolved murder in Beijing, and he finds the most horrifying catalog of killings ever uncovered in the Middle Kingdom. Once more, Margaret is unsure of her mercurial relationship with Li, and if it will threaten their professional collaboration. Having just suffered the heartbreak of burying her father, she arrives in Shanghai to find any partnership with Li threatened by another woman named Mei-Ling. Born in the Year of the Tiger, Mei-Ling seems to have her claws firmly fixed in Li. How can Margaret, a mere “foreign devil,” compete with Mei-Ling, the deputy head of Shanghai’s serious crime squad? Faced with the grisly proposition that the murdered women have been subjected to “live” autopsies, the three soon realize they are tracking a monster of inhuman capacity. The closer they get to this ruthlessly cold-blooded killer, the closer they come to realizing their own personal nightmares. Peter May combines edge-of-the-seat suspense and a brilliantly evoked picture of modern China to create an unstoppable thriller.

In the fourth of Peter May's acclaimed China thrillers, American pathologist Margaret Campbell finds herself back on home soil, only to be faced by a truck full of dead Chinese and an unavoidable confrontation with her past.

A top Chinese swimmer kills himself of the eve of an international event - shattering his country's hopes of victory against the Americans. An Olympic weightlifter dies in the arms of his Beijing mistress - a scandal to be hushed up at the highest level. But the suicides were murder, and both men's deaths are connected to an inexplicable series of "accidents" which has taken the lives of some of China's best athletes. In this fifth China Thriller, Chinese detective Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret Campbell are back in Beijing confronting a sinister sequence of murders which threatens to destroy the future of international athletics.

He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. His victims are young, beautiful and viciously mutilated. Li Yan, the head of Beijing's serious crime squad has been put in the spotlight. His bosses, the media, and the terror-stricken public are demanding a fast result. When American pathologist Margaret Campbell is invited to perform the autopsy on one of the victims her results send shockwaves through the investigation. Then Li begins receiving personal letters from the killer, and his life and career start falling apart. The need to uncover the Ripper's identity becomes paramount if he is to save himself and his family from ruin.

THE 12 MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LEWIS TRILOGY AND THE ENZO FILES AWARD WINNING AUTHOR OF THE CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY 2021 ' Peter May is one of the most accomplished novelists writing today.' Undiscovered Scotland 'No one can create a more eloquently written suspense novel than Peter May.' New York Journal of Books LI YAN AND MARGARET CAMPBELL RETURN IN A NEW SHORT STORY, YEARS AFTER THE DRAMATIC CONCLUSION OF CHINESE WHISPERS . 'I saw your missing girl at a ghost wedding last week. She was the bride.' It has been a whirlwind few years for Li Yan and Margaret Campbell. Nowadays, both are busy juggling their huge professional workloads - Li as the newly promoted chief of Beijing's serious crime squad, and Campbell as lecturer at the University of Public Security - with the day-to-day raising of their young son, Li Jon. When a desperate mother appeals to Campbell's own maternal instincts, Li agrees to look into the disappearance of a 17-year-old Beijing girl, Jiang Meilin. Yet Li's investigation soon turns from a favour into a full-scale murder enquiry. And when he receives an anonymous note he learns Jiang Meilin's death is tied to a dangerous underground trade, and a dark marital rite from China's past. LOVED THE GHOST MARRIAGE ? Start The China Thrillers with the first book in the series, THE FIREMAKER LOVE PETER MAY? Buy his new thriller, THE NIGHT GATE