The Banquet

"The Banquet" is a locked-room mystery novel by author Guan Yue, released in 2010. The story opens with a business collaboration full of hidden tensions: Jialin Company and Jiansen Company, both based in Beijing, are competitors watching each other in the market. On a weekend, Chu Jialin of Jialin Company is invited to drive with companions to Jiansen's suburban residence to discuss the specifics of cooperation between the two companies. The dinner is sumptuous, but the atmosphere is far from relaxed. After the meal, strange things happen one after another in the house: a guest inadvertently catches sight of a masked figure moving about in this house with all doors and windows tightly shut; then, the owner of this new residence unexpectedly meets his death. A sealed suburban house, a host with unclear intentions, and banquet guests each harboring their own thoughts form a typical "closed circle" predicament. The murder does not end everything; rather, it is only the beginning of a series of upheavals. The guests probe each other amid suspicion and fear, and the truth is buried layer by layer. Guan Yue's writing is oriented toward mystery and detective fiction; he excels at weaving thriller elements into the puzzle-solving process, emphasizing the creation of eerie atmosphere and the layered construction of suspense. His works mostly adopt the closed-circle and narrative-trick modes, pursuing highly difficult puzzles and unexpected endings. This book continues that style, running about 200,000 characters in sixteen chapters, framed by a "Prologue" and closed by an "Epilogue," with tight pacing and clues scattered throughout the characters' words and actions and the mansion's spaces—suitable for readers who enjoy unraveling the mystery alongside the characters in a sealed space.