In the seventeenth year of the Republic, in Tianjin, Leng Yue is the most renowned detective in the French Concession. At his side is Huang Feihong, a golden-eyed goshawk, and together they solve bizarre cases that seem impossible. A mirrored locked room, murder by threads of shadow, a wall that breathes, skin sewn into human shapes: every case is a “locked room built by the human heart.”
A hidden lineage of technology links the nine cases. And when Leng Yue discovers that he, too, is part of the System, and that the answers he gives become weapons that kill those closest to him, he finally understands: the most unsolvable locked room in this world has never been a chamber enclosed by stone and brick.
Nine cases, followed by a final case: an epitaph about “answers.” Beneath the shell of a classic whodunit lies a decade-long search for identity.
