June in Wucheng was always shrouded in curtains of rain. At midnight, the phone at the city criminal investigation squad suddenly shattered the silence of the duty room. The voice on the other end trembled uncontrollably, like cotton thread swollen with rainwater, ready to snap at the slightest strain.
“Hello... Is this the police? I need to report a crime... Someone's dead... At the old Western-style house in Huai'an Lane, south of the city. The owner is Shen Jingyan...”
The call was answered by Captain Lu Chen, who had just finished an all-night shift. He rubbed his aching temples, the bitter taste of coffee still lingering on his fingertips. Huai'an Lane was a famous old neighborhood in Wucheng, where rows of Republican-era Western-style houses sat hidden behind thick French plane trees. Most were home to retired professors or collectors. The name Shen Jingyan rang a bell: a well-known antique collector in Wucheng, particularly obsessed with clocks and watches from the late Qing and early Republican periods. The previous year, he had even held an exhibition of his personal collection at the city museum.
Twenty minutes later, Lu Chen arrived at Huai'an Lane with his teammates Lin Xiao and Old Chen, the forensic doctor. The rain had yet to stop. Fine drops pattered against the dark police car, spraying tiny droplets into the air. Number 17 Huai'an Lane was a three-story red-brick house. Its wrought-iron gate stood ajar, and a copper bell on the gatepost swayed gently in the wind, giving a clear chime that sounded particularly sharp in the silent, rainy night.
“Captain, the gate's unlocked.” As Lin Xiao pushed it open, his flashlight swept across the flagstones in the courtyard. A few rotten plane-tree leaves lay scattered there, along with a trail of blurred footprints whose edges had been washed away by the rain, leaving no clear tread pattern.
As they entered the living room, a smell mingled with mildew
See the truth in the details, taste people's hearts in the case - Comment on "The Mysterious Case of the Underworld" "Mystery of the Underworld" is based on two cases spanning different eras, and cleverly integrates detective reasoning and human description. It not only demonstrates the professional rigor of the criminal investigation process, but also unearths the complex emotions and marks of the times behind the cases, making "detective" no longer a simple symbol for solving puzzles, but also becoming a link between the truth and people's hearts. Judging from the case design, the author is good at using "small clues" to reveal the "big truth". In the watchmaker's disappearance code, the stopped clock, the pocket watch with a recording function, and the symbols in the notebook, these seemingly scattered details are actually the key puzzle pieces that connect the truth of the fire twenty years ago; in the skeleton puzzle, a rusty copper button, remaining oil paints, and unfinished sketches, each clue is like a key, gradually opening up the old case of 1988 that has been dusted by time. This kind of narrative technique of "seeing the big from the small"