An Extraordinary Crime

An Extraordinary Crime is a full-length suspense police procedural by public-security writer Shu Zhongmin, originally titled An Extraordinary Promise, which was published in the magazine Woodpecker. The story begins with an accidental discovery by Fang Juan, a female officer at a drug-control center: while going through case files on a series of murdered drug addicts, she notices that the defendants in several murder cases over the years appear to have been framed scapegoats. Following this thread, she and Zheng Hang, deputy chief of a local police station, are drawn into a vast web of conspiracy. Almost all the victims and the wrongly accused are addicts, the group society most easily overlooks and the public most despises. Clearing their names means offending people, courting trouble, and facing pressure from every side. Fang Juan and Zheng Hang are isolated and unsupported, yet they treat the matter as a promise concerning the dignity of the law and the honor of the police, pressing on under pressure to piece together clues. Meanwhile the real killer watches their every move from the shadows, even deliberately leaving clues and playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with them. With copious case-file detail and solid investigative procedure, the novel weaves real-world issues such as drugs, the marginalization of addicts, and procedural justice into its suspense narrative, retaining both the tension of a police procedural and the social-mystery genre's questioning of human nature and institutions. At roughly 390,000 characters, it is the most widely circulated entry in Shu Zhongmin's "Extraordinary" series.