Title: Crime Aborted
Synopsis:
The Special Cases Investigation Division of the Police Department is a unit devoted to handling "imperfect crimes."
On her first day reporting for duty, rookie assistant investigator Da Cheng Lingnan sees firsthand how her seniors work: they don't catch the perpetrators of perfect crimes. They specialize in cases that were abandoned halfway through and left unfinished.
Murder in a locked room? The culprit forgot to lock the door. A copycat murder? The culprit misspelled the victim's name. A perfect alibi? The suspect got the date wrong.
"This isn't deduction. It's proofreading," Da Cheng Lingnan says, watching her partner, a man hailed as a "great detective" who keeps dozing off at crime scenes.
Then a corpse appears in the underground parking garage of the Metropolitan Police Department, a badge from the Investigation Division lodged in its chest. Beside it lies a note:
"This time, I promise not to leave it unfinished."
When "imperfect" is the norm, "perfect" becomes the most dangerous anomaly. Da Cheng Lingnan discovers that someone is collecting failures and piecing together a truly perfect crime.
And her partner, the perpetually slow-to-react detective, seems to have known the culprit's identity all along, because he survived the previous "aborted crime."
Theme: Crime investigation
