The Silent Evidence

Lin Mo is a twenty-four-year-old restorer of secondhand furniture who runs “At Home with Wood,” a shop selling old things that's on the verge of going under. He's antisocial and sharp-tongued, and his only hobby is working with old furniture that can't talk. Then, one rainy night, he hears intermittent sobbing from an antique chair he's repairing.

He discovers that he's awakened a strange ability: he can communicate with objects imbued with powerful “obsessions.”

A chair can sob as it recounts the murder it witnessed. A fountain pen can complain that its former owner wrote far too many sappy love letters. A shattered vase can mourn a love that has long since passed.

From then on, Lin Mo's life is turned upside down. He digs secrets buried by time out of piles of secondhand goods, and coaxes forgotten truths from silent pieces of evidence. When the police are stumped by one cold case after another, they have no idea that the key “eyewitness” may be lying on Lin Mo's workbench, waiting for him to use sandpaper and wood wax oil to “pry” open its mouth.

This is the curious tale of an unreliable “object storyteller” who restores old things and uncovers the truth in a bustling city.