THE SECRET SHARERS

History’s darkest episodes cast a long shadow.

When Chen Cao, the former Chief Inspector of the Shanghai Police Bureau who now directs the Shanghai Judicial System Reform Office, receives an unexpected phone call from the retired cop known as Old Hunter, he suspects he’ll be asked a favor. And indeed, Old Hunter unspools a romantic yarn involving Mei, nicknamed Shanghai’s Number-One Developer, and Xiaohui, aka X, once a promising student at Shanghai University and now a fortuneteller working on sketchy Red Dust Lane. A flashpoint for this relationship was the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. X has disappeared, and Old Hunter asks Chen to investigate; curious by virtue of his own history, Chen agrees. Each installment in this series—whose author, born in Shanghai, now lives in St. Louis—provides a lesson for Western readers on recent Chinese history told through the contemplative eyes of poet and bureaucrat Chen. As Chen ages, the novels include more literature and more nostalgia. Each chapter in Chen’s 14th case documents a day in his search and begins with a pair of poems, one a Chinese classic, hundreds—sometimes thousands—of years old, and one by Chen himself. Illumination ultimately comes through the words of the two former lovers, in print and recording. The mystery of X is also a MacGuffin for Chen’s melancholy reminiscence, stretching all the way back to his childhood during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Qiu’s title is a nod to a classic Joseph Conrad story about identity, duality, and isolation.

A provocative weave of history and mystery anchored in literature.