Hong Jun, avocat pékinois, est surtout célèbre par ses talents de détective, admirablement secondé en cela par sa pétulante et ravissante secrétaire, Song Jia. Aujourd'hui, il est contacté par une femme professeur à l'université de Pékin dont le mari, éminent chercheur dans une société pharmaceutique de pointe, a brusquement perdu la mémoire. Seul, peut-être, un tableau de famille pourra donner la clé du mystère...

When Hong Jun returns to China from studying and working as a lawyer in the US, he opens the doors to his new practice in Beijing intent on helping ordinary people defend their rights, but he soon finds himself embroiled in a case which is anything but ordinary. Ten years earlier, in 1984, on a state farm in the brutally icy, rural northeast of China, local beauty Li Hongmei was raped and murdered. There were two suspects and whilst one disappeared, the other confessed making it a seemingly open and shut case. But now it looks like the wrong man may have been sent down for the crime. His newly-rich brother is prepared to pay whatever it takes to clear his name and he thinks Hong Jun is the right man for the job. In a quest for justice, Hong Jun returns to the sins of the past and delves deep into the sleazy underbelly of China's corrupt legal system. When he stumbles upon what appears to be official complicity in a cover-up he must challenge those who hold the rule of law secondary to personal ambition and the whims of local officials to solve a case shrouded in both mystery and treachery and one that ambiguously alludes to the ancient legends of the Heilongjiang Mountains where the murder took place.

Wu Gui meurt dans des circonstances mystérieuses. Son fils Shi Chenglong charge l'avocat Hong d'enquêter sur cette mort, d'autant qu'il suspecte son oncle Wen Gui d'être le coupable. Or Wu Gui détenait une mystérieuse pierre qui a disparu.

From the author of Hanging Devils, one of The Guardian's top ten Asian crime novels, comes the long-awaited follow-up. When Xia Zhe, an ambitious trader at a state-owned securities company, is indicted for corporate fraud, lawyer Hong Jun takes on the case at the request of the young man's father. But as the trial date looms, it becomes clear that this case of avarice and ill-gotten gains is far from black and white. Hong Jun discovers a web of family secrets and hidden motives leading back to the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution. What he doesn't count on is that, in dredging up these long-dormant histories, he must face the shadows of his own past to get to the truth.