If your bank balance is on the ropes after the financial pounding we call The Holiday Season, have no fear. You can still enjoy your crime fiction thanks to the University of Chicago Press. Every month, the publisher issues a free ebook, and once in a while, it’s a crime fiction title. Throughout January, you can download Murder in Ancient China by Robert van Gulik and it won’t cost you a yuan.

The two short stories inside will take you back to the golden age of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) where you’ll meet Judge Dee, a man who investigates murder, robbery and treason whilst negotiating the tricky mores of the society he inhabits. Can Dee solve the murder of a poet, killed by moonlight in his own garden? Robert van Gulik was a Dutch diplomat, author and historian of ancient China. He passed away back in 1967.

If you link through to the University of Chicago Press website you’ll find the book available in a variety of e-reader friendly formats, or you can download it from Amazon UK below. Let us know what you think of it.

The last crime book the UCP gave away free was very good – The Score, a Parker novel by Donald E Westlake writing as Richard Stark.