Qiu, Xiaolong

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is taking a vacation, in part because he is annoyed at his boss, Party Secretary Li, but also because he has been made an offer he can?t refuse by Gu, a triad-connected businessman. For what seems to be a fortune?with no apparent strings attached? he is to translate a business proposal for the New World, a complex of shops and restaurants to be built in Central Shanghai, evoking nostalgia for the ?glitter and glamour? of the 1930s. It is up to Detective Yu, Chen?s partner, to take charge of a new case. Yin, a novelist, has been murdered in her room. At first it seems that only a neighbor could have committed the crime, but when one confesses, Yu cannot believe that he is really the killer. As Yu looks further into Yin?s life, ample motives begin to surface, even on the part of Internal Security. But it is only when Inspector Chen steps back into the investigation that the culprit is apprehended. And then Chen discovers how Gu has played him and how he, in turn, can play the new capitalist system.

When the wife of an important witness in an American criminal case disappears, it is up to Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau and Catherine Rohn of the United States Marshals Service to work together to find her.

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police joins forces with his counterpart at the U.S. Marshall's Service, Inspector Catherine Rhon, to investigate a high-stakes corruption case.

A young ?national model worker,? renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his own superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career?perhaps even his life?if he wants to see justice done.