Dark Currents

Shen Mo, a former criminal investigator, was suspended after his partner died in the line of duty three years ago. He is now a private detective. Cool-headed and meticulous, he excels at criminal profiling, but traumatic memories leave him suffering from bouts of amnesia. On the night his partner died, there is a thirty-minute gap in his memory.

Lu Xingye is a brilliant PhD in psychology who specializes in criminal profiling and has been hired to assist the police. He appears flippant and carefree, but is in fact perceptive and obsessive, able to spot lies through the smallest facial expressions. When he was young, his father was falsely accused of being a serial killer and died by suicide. Lu Xingye swore to uncover the truth.

During the rainy season, a serial murder case erupts in Linjiang, an ancient city in Jiangnan. The victims are posed as if in confession, with copper gears stuffed into their throats. The killer leaves a damaged antique pocket watch at each crime scene and plays an old song from twenty years ago, “Dark River.” Lu Xingye joins the investigation as a consultant and discovers that the murders closely resemble an unsolved case from twenty years earlier. The pocket watch found in the third victim’s hand is engraved with the badge number of Shen Mo’s late partner, making the police suspect Shen Mo is the killer. Lu Xingye seeks Shen Mo out and proposes an alliance based on “using each other”: he will clear Shen Mo’s name, and Shen Mo will help him investigate his father’s old case. They are both partners and rivals, both allies and enemies. They distrust each other, yet have no choice but to rely on one another to solve the puzzle. A maze of memories, twists of identity, schemes within schemes: the story is packed with suspense and escalating tension, impossible to put down...