The Indolent Exile

A weary private investigator from Luoyang is hired to track a disgraced scholar exiled to the pestilent south. But as he follows his target through the miasmic Lingnan region, he discovers he is being stalked by a mysterious shadow of his own. In a world of imperial paranoia and bureaucratic sloth, the so-called perfect crime reveals itself to be nothing but the offspring of bad digestion, procrastination, and the absurd hand of fortune.