A Record of Crime Scene Investigation in the 1990s

Lu Chen, a top criminal investigation expert with the modern Ministry of Public Security, has an accident while tracking a crucial lead in the Shadow Serial Murder Case, which has haunted him for half his life. When he opens his eyes, he has transmigrated back to 1995 in Nanjiang Province, where he has become a rookie police academy graduate with the same name, newly assigned to the municipal Public Security Bureau's Criminal Investigation Unit.

This is an era without Sky Net surveillance, nationwide DNA and fingerprint databases, or computerized investigative tools. Criminal investigations rely heavily on canvassing and witness interviews, and countless heinous cases become cold cases because of technological and conceptual limitations. But Lu Chen's mind holds three decades of cutting-edge investigative methods, criminal psychology profiling techniques, standards for examining trace evidence, and the truth behind countless buried cold cases, along with the investigative oversights that kept them unsolved.

Faced with skepticism from his colleagues, technological barriers, and the limitations of his era, Lu Chen never relies on “foreknowledge” to gain an unfair advantage. Instead, he breaks down his advanced expertise into investigative leads that make sense in the present: identifying a killer's height, weight, and profession from overlooked wear patterns on shoeprints; reconstructing the killer's psychology and motives from the shape of a victim's wounds; building a complete profile from seemingly unrelated clues; and finding irrefutable evidence in trace materials that traditional investigators never thought to look for.

From a string of home-invasion murders that shocks the whole city to a baffling dismemberment case on the outskirts, from armed fugitives on the run across provincial borders to a serial killer lurking in the streets, Lu Chen uses his formidable expertise to tear through the truth in one desperate situation after another. He grows from an ostracized rookie into the “ace consultant” whom no one in Nanjiang's police force can help but respect.