The Eleventh Finger

The Eleventh Finger is the third installment in Medical Examiner Qin Ming's "Myriad Phenomena" series (originally published as the third season of the "Corpse Whisperer" series). It was first published in 2014 by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, and a collector's edition was released in 2020 by Beijing United Publishing Company. It is also the source novel for the hit 2016 Sohu Video web series Medical Examiner Qin Ming. The book unfolds from the first-person perspective of frontline medical examiner Qin Ming. Qin Ming, trace evidence investigator Lin Tao, and medical examiner assistant Dabao (renamed Li Dabao in the web series) form a forensic team, working alongside their mentor in frontline investigation, autopsy, and deduction, using professional knowledge to reconstruct the process of death and rebuild crime scenes, bringing one seemingly impenetrable case after another into the light. The book contains more than ten standalone stories adapted from real cases: at a site where illegal gutter oil was seized, a fried human finger is retrieved from the bottom of a swill barrel; in surveillance footage from a deserted alley late at night, a figure in white approaches a girl walking alone; a body found at a garbage station is skeletal, yet one foot remains perfectly intact; there are also scenes of death by "papering" in the manner of ancient torture, feet floating up from the bottom of a well, a woman tied to a tombstone... Behind these cases are intertwined desire, jealousy, revenge, and indifference, pointing to the darkest side of human nature. Beyond the standalone cases, there is a main thread running through the whole book: among the dismembered remains, a finger repeatedly appears that belongs to none of the victims, and finger by finger a serial dismemberment case takes shape. What Qin Ming finds even harder to accept is that a scene involving a female corpse in a rented apartment bears his own traces, and he is listed as a suspect in the serial murder case. The team must find the real culprit while suspended and misunderstood, bringing the book to its climactic reversal. The book ends with an extra chapter, "The Demon's Confession," which fills in the truth from another perspective. The book moves at a brisk pace and is professionally hardcore, carrying both the tension of solving cases and the warmth of "speaking for the living, speaking for the dead."