Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Twenty years after he investigated an unsolved murder Sergeant Haoming of the Chengdu Police Department is killed. The first in a string of crimes committed by Eumenides, a self appointed righter if wrongs and dispenser of summary justice.
This is the first in a trilogy of novels that have been turned into an online TV series in China that has been seen by more than two billion viewers.
Crime fiction can sometimes be accused of focussing disproportionately on books from Europe and the US, when there is a whole world of new perspectives and striking similarities to explore. Many of these can be found in this surprising and enjoyable novel.
On one hand this is a novel that could be set in any country, all the familiar elements are there and presented by Haohui in a way that shows mastery of the craft of thriller writing.
That it is set in China in 2002, the moment when the country took the latest of its many great leaps forward, draws the attention if his readers to some fascinating differences. These include the growing gap between those who have benefited from the new economic opportunities and those left behind; the rigid discipline that holds this potentially corrosive contraction together. His cast of cops are, on the one hand, like those in any other thriller, wrangling with the demands of their superiors and their own personal issues, but doing so in a culture where despite all their new freedoms, people still have to carefully monitor what they say.
This is a well written thriller with plenty of surprises and some expertly conceived set pieces. If the two instalments that follow are as good, then this has the makings of a truly impressive series.
Editor’s Note : Translated by Zac Haluza
