The directions on the audio are immensely helpful in sorting out Beijing’s confusing street names. But be warned: Beijing changes so fast that from my first walk with Mr. French to my second, a building central to Pamela’s last hours had been knocked down. And one of Beijing’s best restaurants, Maison Boulud, housed in the old American Embassy in the Legation Quarter, was our destination in the summer. It closed in December. More on that later.

Here are some high points from the audio and the book:

After following Mr. French’s directions from the Beijing Rail Station to the narrow street called Armor Factory Alley, you will come across the red-painted door of No. 1, where Pamela and her father lived. The number of the house stands out on a chipped iron sign above the entryway. The door is imposing, although the grandeur of the house is difficult to judge. A recent, roughshod one-room addition juts onto the street, a perfect example of the haphazard planning in what is left of Beijing’s old alleyways, commonly known as hutongs. On the other side of the street, the Snows lived at No. 6 (although in her book, Ms. Snow says their house was No. 13). Here, too, it is difficult to gauge the vast scale of their home; according to Ms. Snow’s account, Edgar sat in the study near the gate for six months and wrote “Red Star Over China.”

About a 10-minute walk from Armor Factory Alley — down a set of stairs and under a bridge — the base of the Fox Tower, now known as the Dongbianmen, a mammoth gray brick wall with a watchtower on top, looms in front of you. This is where Pamela’s body was found in the early morning of Jan. 8, 1937, by an old man walking his songbird. The ditch where she was dumped is now near one of the city’s main ring roads.

The Red Gate Gallery, which opened in 1991, occupies the first floor of the tower. It is worth visiting for the contemporary Chinese art, and the Ming dynasty interior. Brian Wallace, the Australian founder, and one of the most knowledgeable art experts in the city, is often on hand.

From there, it is a short stroll into the ramshackle area, known in the 1930s as the Badlands, where Pamela was murdered. You must cross a busy intersection into today’s Chuanban Hutong; you know you are in the right spot when you see a food shop at the entrance of the street with sacks of flour on the floor, bamboo containers of steaming fresh buns, and a smiling woman offering her goodies for less than a dollar apiece.