I imagine my mom would call the Judge Dee Mysteries “brain candy,” but they are not without merit. The information on Chinese culture is an imperceptible backwash, or covert additive. That said, The Chinese Gold Murders seems the most like junk food. I almost put it down; I mean were-tigers and the egregious use of ghosts? 
Ironically those may have been the most traditional “Chinese” elements of the stories (see previous post re Deux ex machina here) . The wikipedia link above is a stub and I hope someone will edit it (maybe even cite this post as a source?).
At the end it was somewhat redeemed, but note that the series wasn’t composed in chronological order – that is this story takes place early in the judge’s career, but was written by Van Gulik late in the series. It’s a prequel. When has a prequel measured up?
There is a minor homoerotic subplot that continues a GLBT theme, that someone could do something with. There’s also a play within a play that has been done before in Judge Dee, and seems a bit forced.
Traditional Confucians – and Chinese – have a distrust of Buddhists; a bit of a bias against them. Monks often turn out to be disreputable. I noticed that in news coverage while I lived in Taiwan. Not unlike the traditional Catholic view of evangelists or charismatic protestant preachers. The treatment of Buddhists is worth studying here – as well as the relationship between old China and Korea.
It is fun, though it borders on silly sometimes. The book is in the Lawrence Public Library, is also cheap used on Amazon, but is not out on Kindle/ e-book that I know of.
