The Case of Ida Wong

When I first read China Dolls, I was struck by the gruesome murder of Grace's roommate Ida Wong.  It's not that Ida's death isn't foreshadowed.  Her rocky relationship with Ray Boiler is clearly heading for a bad end, and Ida ignores warnings about Ray's unstable nature. Nevertheless, she toys with his obsessive affection and deliberately manipulates his jealousy by flamboyantly flirting with the service men who frequent the Forbidden City. At first glance her murder seems like something taken out of one of Lisa's early Red Princess mysteries.

As is often the case, it is what Lisa does with her historical research that counts. At the end of China Dolls she writes that Ida's murder was inspired by that of the Japanese actress Midi Takaoka (381). At first glance the actual crime would seem to offer very little to the novel.  According to newspaper sources such as The Daily Mail (Hagerstown, MD), the Alton Evening Telegraph, and the Reading Times, the Takaoka case was a clear case of an unfortunate lovers' triangle.  Ray Johnson, a cook, was so upset that his lover had fallen for another man, that he came into her bedroom and killed her with a butcher knife taken from the restaurant where he worked. At the end of the preliminary hearing, Johnson said that if he were executed for the crime, it would be ok with him.