Seven authors. Seven works of detective fiction on the brink of publication. One invisible reader named “Ghost” who brings them all crashing down with one click of the “Send” button.

How do you write “true crime”? How should we write it? In this piece of masterful metafiction that packs every bit of the punch of crime writing, Wolf Hsu plays out an answer to that question in the form of seven spooky interactions between famous crime writers and a faceless, somehow precognitive internet reader named “Ghost.”

Each one of these authors has written a crime novel, the primary event of which has, in fact, been adapted from true crime events in Taiwan. Each book is expected to be a blockbuster when it comes out. But not long before publication, every writer in turn receives an email from an unknown person who has somehow read the manuscript ahead of time, and has seen through the holes and contradictions in every plot. Amidst an exchange of emails, each author watches his or her much-prized story topple before their very eyes.

In this polished, cool, and impactfully narrated collection of stories, Wolf Hsu invokes a great question of crime literature through scenes of reading, writing, and deconstruction. Through these stories, the reader lives and relives the imagined stories, only to turn and doubt what he has just seen.