Had Mao and the CCP executed a “strategic retreat” to the island of Taiwan rather than the KMT, not only the wheels of justice but also everyday life would change in noxiously dangerous ways. As Li Zhenyuan well knows, even cunning investigators aren’t safe from cruel fate when history is upended.
Elements of history, crime, and espionage unfold in this novel against the backdrop of an Axis victory in the Second World War and the dissolution of China. After losing out to factious political infighting, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong flees with loyalists to Taiwan where they launch a deleterious campaign of class struggle and political cleansing, and plan a Great Leap Forward to transform their island redoubt into a formidable industrial power.
The story opens in 1963 in Taipei City’s Dadaocheng District, which, although two decades ago a prosperous center of business and trade, is now home to a largely broken and half-starved population where only Party members and government officials live somewhat better off. A mutilated corpse with missing organs discovered in the district along the banks of the old Tamsui River raises curiosity and suspicion when it is found not only to be the remains of someone rather well-fed in life but also to have unrelinquished gold teeth!
While his fellow officers hypothesized it was likely a Mainland spy, Case Officer Li Zhenyuan found evidence in the gold tooth that the person had been a long-term resident of Taiwan. After reviewing missing person reports, the body is identified as Railway Department Section Chief and model worker Wu Fuguo. Adding to the mystery, soon after Li uncovers Wu’s sizable nest egg, Wu’s wife and his mistress turn up dead as well.
Just as Li pursues his investigation, Party Chairman Mao announces a new campaign to eliminate Party schismatics and independence agitators to harden the island’s readiness to “Retake the Mainland”. Li, the son of a once-prominent Dadaocheng family who had studied in Japan, can’t avoid being caught in this new witch hunt and sent, along with his colleagues, to prison. Staying alive and keeping his wife and daughter safe suddenly becomes his singular hope and mission.