Shanghai's foreign concessions, 1925. This is the “Paris of the East,” but also a lawless haven where crime flourishes. When Chinese and foreign police are at their wits' end, people always think of the eccentric who lives in Huili, on Fuzhou Road: Huo Mingzhe.
Educated at the former Qing Dynasty School of Translation, he once worked as an interpreter for the police. Disgusted by his foreign superior's favoritism, he quit in a fit of anger and became a private detective. He is addicted to coffee, fluent in street slang, and well versed in Western criminal investigation. In the concessions, he is the outsider who understands the “rules” best.
The first case, “The Blood-Written Riddle on Avenue Edward VII,” begins when a comprador from Jardine Matheson is found dead in a vacant house, with the words “Revenge” scrawled in blood on the wall. Chinese and foreign detectives squabble over credit and pass the buck, while the truth remains shrouded in mystery. Only Huo Mingzhe can piece it together, following a copper ring, a tire track, and two deadly pills to uncover a blood-soaked revenge plot spanning twenty years and buried in the salt flats and Suzhou Creek. His partnership with Chu Shouzhen, a retired army doctor, begins here, as the two confront the darkest side of this dazzling city.
