Coffee-Fueled, Iron-Blooded Detective × White-Tea-Nurtured, Icy Forensic Doctor | Hard-Core Criminal Investigation | Old Wrongful Convictions | Two Strong Leads in Perfect Sync | Solving Cold Cases
Everyone in the city bureau’s criminal investigation division knows Captain Lu is an iron-blooded hardcase kept going by black coffee and case files. At 188 centimeters tall, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, he has sharp, knife-like features. The old scar between the thumb and index finger of his left hand is his medal of honor. His mild obsessive-compulsive streak means every piece of evidence is arranged with ruler-like precision. A wrongful conviction from his youth has become an unresolved knot he is determined to untie. He handles cases with swift, decisive efficiency and has almost no empathy, yet he alone can notice the hint of exhaustion between forensic doctor Shen Yan’s brows.
Shen Yan is the steady hand at the autopsy table. His cool, pale complexion and gold-rimmed glasses complement his long, slender fingers, steady as stone around a scalpel. He can face decomposed or dismembered bodies without so much as a change in expression, drawing silent truths from bare bones. He speaks little, but every word hits home. His empathy is off the charts, letting him understand the despair of the dead. In private, he likes brewing a pot of white tea and tending a few succulents. He also quietly adds warm water to Lu Zheng’s black coffee and keeps stomach medicine on hand to give him whenever his stomach acts up.
When an unidentified body found in a reservoir on the outskirts of the city bears the exact same flame tattoo as the victim in a wrongful-conviction case from three years ago, and the metal button beneath the dead man’s tongue proves identical to an item of evidence in the old case file...
Lu Zheng grips his coffee cup, veins standing out on the back of his hand. “We have to reopen this case.”
Shen Yan wipes the blood from his fingertips and pushes a cup of warm white tea toward him. “I’m with you. Bodies don’t lie, and neither does the truth.”
The bitterness of black coffee meets the mellow richness of white tea. Together, the iron-blooded detective and the cool-headed forensic doctor cut through layer upon layer of fog, clearing an old injustice and restoring justice.
