Zhong Fong is a young and ambitious homicide detective in modern Shanghai. His actress wife is rehearsing the leading role in a Chinese production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Assigned to the Dim Sum killings, a grisly series of murders, the young detective is tormented by doubts about his wife's love, and constant frustration in his investigation from his superiors. Inevitably, the various events converge in a heart-wrenching climax that leaves their lives changed forever.

Detective Fong, former head of Special Investigations, has been exiled to Northwestern China. Two men come and whisk him away in the middle of the night to investigate the brutal murder of seventeen men.

Detective Fong has regained his position as head of Special Investigations in Shanghai. All seems under control until one of Shanghai's state run abortion clinics explodes in a ball of fire. A note is left in English, then a second clinic is attacked.

In the latest installment in the Zhong Fong series. The city's 18 million residents are hurtling toward modernization, and hits home when Fong rooms at the Shanghai Theatre are being condo-ized and he can buy them at a special price four years worth of his salary. The night watchman summons Fong to the theatre where finds his old rival Geoffrey Highland swinging from a rope at centre stage."

As Shanghai surpasses Hong Kong as Asia’s most important city, Zhong Fong’s Office of Special Investigations faces an increasingly sophisticated, and increasingly global, breed of criminal. When Fong follows a disturbing lead, he finds himself in the rural backwater of Anhui Province. Here, he is shocked to discover a blood-trafficking racket and a massive outbreak of AIDS. In pursuit of the blood traffickers, Fong embarks on what proves to be the longest journey of his life. It will eventually take him to the streets of Vancouver – and a meeting with a man who holds an old, and potentially lethal, grudge.