Poets and Murder is a gong'an detective novel written by Robert van Gulik and set in Imperial China (roughly speaking the Tang dynasty).

It is a fiction based on the real character of Judge Dee (Ti Jen-chieh or Di Renjie), a magistrate and statesman of the Tang court, who lived roughly 630–700.

Judge Dee is a magistrate in the fictional Poo-yang district, a wealthy area through which the Grand Canal of China runs (part of modern-day Jiangsu province).

During the mid-autumn festival in the city of Chin-hwa, Judge Dee is a guest of a small group of distinguished scholars.

[1] Poo-yang was the setting for many Judge Dee stories including: The Emperor's Pearl, The Chinese Bell Murders, Necklace and Calabash, and The Red Pavilion.