Tang-era detective finds cases elementary

Based on his archives of real and fictional ancient Chinese crime cases, Van Gulik re-created the cases and depicted Di as a Western-style detective, who emphasized facts and investigated crime scenes through rigorous reasoning, while serving as an impartial county magistrate of integrity who cared for the people.

It was not until the 1980s that the books were translated into Chinese.

Chen Laiyuan, one of the first translators, writes in a preface to the new edition of the set that each of Van Gulik's books are independent but are also connected with each other, in the storytelling style of the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties, which made Van Gulik's novels unique compared to works created by other Sinologists.

The writing style is unique also because Van Gulik ingeniously combines his extensive Chinese historical and cultural knowledge with the techniques of Western mystery fiction to cover every aspect of Tang society, including its judiciary, working style and achievements of government officials, diplomacy, industry and commerce, education, culture, religion, customs and lives of common people, according to Chen.

In recent years, as the books have entered the public domain, more translations have come out. So far, the Judge Dee Mysteries have been translated into 29 languages and have been published in 38 countries and regions. They have also inspired film and TV play adaptations.

The first Chinese TV adaptation appeared in 1987 and starred Sun Chengzheng as Di, who was applauded for "walking directly out of Van Gulik's fiction".