Imagine Jason Bourne meets an older, grumpier John McClane, but both are inadvertent players in a top-secret international arms scandal worth billions of dollars. Sprinkle in some black humor, Chinese cuisine, and secret societies, and you get The Sniper: a brand-new take on the international thriller, Taiwanese style.

Twelve days before retirement, Taipei Police detective Wu takes on a curious case: a Navy officer has committed suicide in his hotel room. Wu immediately recognizes that he’s been murdered, but the military wants to close the case with no questions asked. Yet the officer is merely the first of his colleagues to die under suspicious circumstances.

Meanwhile, far away in Europe, a sleeper cell is called to action. A young Taiwanese sniper, ex-Marine and ex-French Foreign Legion, who had been working as a stir-fry cook in Manarola, Italy, receives orders to assassinate a high-level Taiwanese government advisor in Rome. He is soon on the run, fleeing across Europe only steps ahead of his old brothers-in-arms.

Who is killing Navy officers in Taiwan? Who ordered the kill in Rome? As Wu races against time to solve this rapidly-escalating murder case before his retirement, Alex finds his way back to Taiwan and his own military beginning – a foster home where a benevolent “uncle” trained war orphans to serve their country. 

Based on the biggest military corruption case in Taiwan history and the murder of Navy Captain Yin Ching-feng, The Sniper is both a masterclass in thriller writing and a study of the human heart of darkness. It leads off a series of “cuisine meets crime” novels penned by leading Chinese-language crime writers and published by Marco Polo under the guidance of Sean Hsu, Taiwan’s leading crime editor and critic.