The Mad Witness

In the twilight of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai's first insurance companies become hunting grounds for predators in frock coats. When claims investigator Shen Hao looks into a rickshaw accident, he stumbles into a labyrinth of staged deaths and psychological enslavement. A mad beggar's ravings hold the key to a conspiracy where the master puppeteer is one of his own—a fellow investigator who has turned the art of reading men into the art of erasing them.