"The Book of Deception" is a notebook novel written by Zhang Yingyu, a native of Zhejiang during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty. Its full name is "Ding Ke Jianghu Lianyuan Du Xiao's New Book", also known as "The Book of Preventing Scam" and "Du Xiao's New Book". The purpose of the book is to analyze Jianghu scams in the late Ming Dynasty. It is divided into four volumes and 88 chapters in 24 categories. It includes typical scams such as stripping scams, silver exchange scams, and prostitution scams. The cases cover the horse buying scam on Sanshan Street in Nanjing, the cloth scam on Jiancheng Street, etc.
The book uses a realistic approach to record the money, sex, and people scams carried out by professional swindlers, citizen farmers, corrupt officials, and other fraudsters. Most of the victims were wealthy businessmen, dignitaries, and women from good families. Each story is followed by the author's notes and comments, which have the characteristics of both public case novels and world affairs notes. The content covers all aspects of social life in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Some cases in the book reveal the nature of fraud through techniques such as cloth trading and mortgage fraud.
