221B Shanghai: In Search of a Spy Case

In Room 221B of an old Western-style mansion in Jing'an District, Shanghai, lives Xia Yan, an eccentric detective unlike any other. He has inherited Holmes's extraordinary powers of deduction, uncovering shocking conspiracies through the smallest details. Lin Chen, a former forensic doctor who left his job to join him, is his most trusted assistant and case chronicler.

A bizarre murder rocks a top-tier gallery on the Bund: The Bund in the Mist, valued at 320 million yuan, vanishes into thin air, while the elderly curator is found dead in a seemingly impossible locked-room murder. The police are convinced it was a theft and murder. But Xia Yan sees through the clumsy disguise with clues like coffee stains, scratches on a door lock, and scraps of canvas: this was a deliberate silencing.

As the investigation deepens, currents surge beneath the surface murder. A secret compartment in the famous painting conceals classified information about a high-end domestically made chip. The victim's identity leads to a diplomat's fabricated suicide ten years ago, while a cross-border spy ring known as the Eye of the Bund lies in wait in Shanghai. A curator with two faces, a wealthy patron being blackmailed, a mole in the police, and a triple agent: identities twist upon themselves, leaving it impossible to tell friend from foe.

Cases within cases intertwine, while espionage plots grow more perilous at every turn. Trapped in a web of spies, Xia Yan and Lin Chen wield logic as a gun and observation as a blade, dismantling layers of lies as they hunt for the ultimate truth. When a decade-old injustice, corporate espionage, and the mastermind behind it all are finally laid bare, this Sherlock Holmes-style investigation in a modern city will tear away every shadow in the mist.

A meticulously plotted, mind-bending 500,000-word saga that recreates the classic art of deduction and crafts a twist-filled modern espionage detective thriller.