In 2011, the British author Paul French, an expatriate living in China, published a study of the murder, "Midnight in Peking", which explores the career and character of Werner and offers a solution to the mystery. A TV adaptation of the book is currently being produced by Kudos with a script by Richard Warlow (creator, writer and show runner of the BBC Television and Amazon Prime series Ripper Street. Jonathan Spence, in a review of the book, speculates that part of the reason that the crime was not solved was that Werner made "a self-insulating cult of his loneliness. It may indeed have been true that he disliked most people he met, and that he made no attempt to conceal it." He adds that Werner was "not the kind of man who made people want to help when he was in trouble. He infuriated the British, failed to get in close touch with the Chinese officers assigned to the case, gave his own contradictory press conferences on the steps of the regional substation, and rooted around the probable crime scenes without permission."