Long before Western writers had even conceived the idea of writing detective stories, the Chinese had developed an extended custom of literary functions that chronicled the cases of important district magistrates. Perhaps one of the most famous of the was Judge Dee, who resided in the seventh century AD.

This book, written anonymously in the eighteenth century, interweaves three of Judge Dee’s most baffling cases: a double murder among traveling merchants, the fatal poisoning of a bride on her wedding night, as well as the suspicious death of the shop keeper with a lovely wife. The crimes take him along the great silk routes, into historic graveyards where he consults the spirits of the inactive, and through all degrees of society, leading him for some brilliant detective work.