Blood-Soaked Tiandu

Blood-Soaked Tiandu, originally titled The Tiandu Dismemberment Case, is a full-length suspense novel by Chen Jiuge (real name Chen Xiao), published by New World Press in July 2010 and a qualifying entry in the sixth Sina Original Literature Contest. The novel draws on the real 1996 Nanjing "January 19" dismemberment case, renaming the city "Tiandu," and tells of the murder of a female university student that shocks the whole city: after a first-year student at Tiandu University goes missing, her body is cut into numerous pieces and scattered in busy streets, with signs that the head and internal organs were boiled. The Tiandu police pour enormous manpower and resources into the investigation, and over a thousand suspects are brought in for questioning in turn, yet the case remains mired in interwoven and contradictory leads and goes long unsolved. Told mainly from the perspective of detectives Liu Yang, Meng Gang, and their colleagues, the novel sets forensic logic against the darkness of human nature: the first part follows the investigation as it sinks into layer upon layer of mystery; the middle part advances the leads through detective Meng Gang's deductions, only for a single oversight to raise new questions; and the final part turns to flashback, tracing the past and prior causes of those involved and revealing the entanglements behind the case, bringing the story full circle. The author deliberately downplays horror and focuses instead on chains of reasoning and character motives, using a subdued, restrained style to recreate the oppressive atmosphere and social pressure of the case, and voicing through fictional characters a meditation on the human abyss in which "the soul goes mad for love." The book runs about 349,000 characters over 348 pages and is a popular suspense and detective novel.