Chinese Detective Cases

Compiled by Wu Jianren, a master of late Qing satirical fiction, and published in the thirty-second year of the Guangxu reign. At a time when translated detective stories filled the bookstalls, he set out to collect thirty-four native cases from Chinese notebooks and old-timers' tales: the severed cloth, the trial of the tree, the fight with the winnowing basket, and the case of the chicken at the Pu family's Fifth House. No foreign detectives, just Chinese ingenuity. Each story is concise and compelling, with a closing commentary that reveals the ways of the world through each case. The living source of Chinese detective fiction begins here.