For anyone reading The Slaughter Pavilion and interested in the story of the vanishing children, you might be interested in this from the very excellent Global Voices Online. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/10/08/china-40-missing-children-parents-journey-in-beijing/      Sadly, the fiction in The Slaughter Pavilion is not without some basis.

This week, I wrote a blog for the Guardian''s Comment is Free section on the banning of Western religious music from concert halls.  The ban has not been made public but is, as far as I understand, common knowledge in the concert halls of the capital. No one knows why exactly the authorities have done this, but in my view it''s part of a general trend towards the left, that is, towards a more inward-looking China and increased paranoia about exchanges with the West, and fear of Christianity. You can link to my blog here (why the link mentions tibet, I do not know.) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/08/china.tibet

Also, I''ve had two lovely reviews for The Slaughter Pavilion in the last few days. One, by Matthew Lewin writing in The Guardian, can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/crime.roundupreviews2

And from Susanna Yager writing in The Sunday Telegraph:     http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/05/bocrime105.xml