The Judge Dee Novels provides a comprehensive survey of Robert van Gulik's series of novels (1949-1968) featuring the Tang dynasty magistrate, Judge Dee. In addition to providing a synopsis of each of the Judge Dee stories (with commentaries on the plots, the characters, and the thematic and historical aspects of each story), it examines van Gulik's achievement in two significant, related contexts: the development of detective fiction (both Chinese and Western) and the image of China in popular American literature of the twentieth century.