The Detective in Time

Detective in Time is the debut novel of author Fu Er, originally titled Timequake and published in 2011 by New World Press as part of the "Sprout Book Series." Set in Pittsburgh, the story follows veteran police detective Ian McCarthy as he is plunged into a new nightmare: barely six months after catching "the Professor," the most vicious serial killer in the city's history, a fresh string of murders grips Pittsburgh once more. The papers dub the new killer "the Coin Killer," and fear descends on the city again. With the investigation deadlocked, McCarthy stumbles upon the existence of the "timequake"—an anomaly in which time flows backward—and thereby touches the deepest secret of the universe. Through the timequake, he seizes the chance to return three months into the past and solve this "serial murder case that has not yet happened" ahead of time. Yet the case veers far beyond his expectations, as time, fate, and chance entangle with one another, and every step the detective takes toward the truth threatens to lead to an even more unbearable outcome. Running about 170 pages, the book takes time reversal as its core premise, grafting the puzzle-solving pleasure of classic fair-play mystery onto the speculative license of science fiction, and adopts the hard-boiled narrative voice of American tough-guy detective fiction to explore fate and choice within the framework of genre fiction. It was jointly recommended by writers including Na Duo, Han Song, Xiao Fan, and Zhang Yiwei.