Forensic Expert

Forensic Expert is the first installment in a domestic criminal-investigation mystery series by post-90s author Wang Wenjie, subtitled "Insect Corpse Whisper." The story unfolds in Nanming, a city of over a million people: after a wealthy businessman is murdered and his body dumped in the wilderness, the scene yields no useful traces—only swarms of carrion-feeding insects and a mysterious beetle of unknown origin. Thereafter a string of bizarre homicides follows in quick succession—mutated corpse-eating bugs, a body sealed inside a wall, a disfigured actress, a corpse dismembered at a crematorium, a floating body in a pond, the human-pony torture, a headless corpse in a lake, a decomposing body in the forest, a midnight terror, a parasite boy, a corpse wrapped in maggots—each more chilling than the last. Led by Jin Chi, the forensic and investigation team rely on forensic entomology, using flies, beetles, dermestids, and other insects parasitic on the bodies to estimate time of death, reconstruct the sequence of events, and hunt down the killers amid mutilated remains and eerie insect swarms. Behind these seemingly isolated cases, a blue-green mysterious beetle reappears at multiple scenes, faintly linking a larger conspiracy, and the clues ultimately point to someone long dead. The book comprises eleven cases plus one side story, with every clue spoken for the dead by insects.