The Gossip Detective

Thirty-five-year-old policewoman Fulin's life is as placid as water—until she stumbles upon an eccentric detective who solves cases without fingerprints or surveillance footage, relying instead on street-corner gossip and a bizarre set of divination cards. At first Fulin scoffs at the whole business, but as case after case comes along, she has no choice but to join forces with this "gossip detective," step by step descending into depths woven from lies, secrets, and human nature. The book consists of two long cases. The first section revolves around "The Triplets Murder Case": a mysterious and deranged criminal mastermind surfaces; an odd fortune-teller, the alibi of suspect Qian Xiaona, the defense that "hemophobia makes the crime impossible," a relay-style method of killing, and an agreement between the Fifth Party and the police peel back the contours of the case layer by layer—and who the mastermind really is can only be guessed from scattered clues. The second section shifts to "The Fox Spirit Rafting Murder Case": the legend of a fox spirit haunting the rafting spot, a legal-affairs paparazzo's pursuit, a group of people deliberately gathered in one place, a forged bloody handprint, a double—even triple—locked room, and a replicated crime process send the case veering from reversal to reversal. The Fifth Party, a master of laying plots, and the detective, hopeless at deduction yet holding the facts in hand, grapple with each other until, when the truth is revealed, Fulin must face a choice: keep believing in evidence and the law, or accept this partner who wields gossip as a weapon and uses divination to pry into the human heart. With deduction as its bone and humor as its flesh, the book swings back and forth between locked rooms, tricks, and the human heart.