Broken Crossroads

English information

• Title: Broken Crossroads
• Author: Shinoigo
• Rights available: Translation・Film/TV・Audio
• Tagline: No one entered the house for seven days. The body in the bathtub says otherwise.
• Synopsis: Weeks before a local election in the city of Beidu, Xu Benxiang, the twenty-one-year-old illegitimate son of a four-term city councilor, is found bound in duct tape and dead in the bathtub of his riverside villa. He has been there for days. The gated community has guards and cameras at every gate, yet ten days of footage show no one entering or leaving the house for a full week. Detective Tan Wuzhen is pulled off a drowning case at a public pool to lead the investigation, with forensic officer Xin Yinfei at his side. Councilor Li Jianyi, who has deep ties to the city's largest gang, warns the police that he will find the killer himself if they do not find him first. The prime suspect, Xie Yiqi, the dead man's closest friend, has vanished.
• Characters:
• Tan Wuzhen: Thirty-two, head of the first criminal squad at the Beidu precinct. Scruffy in a black T-shirt and denim shirt all year round, and the fastest mind in the station.
• Xin Yinfei: Forensic officer, two years his junior, studying medicine on the side to become a medical examiner. Cool, precise, never leaves a crime scene without a can of black coffee.
• Su Mingyin: Precinct chief. Looks like a gangster, thinks like a strategist, and shields his team from the councilor and from his own superiors.
• Li Jianyi: Four-term city councilor with roots in the Beiho gang and an eye on the mayor's office. The dead man was his son by his first love.
• "Quick" (Jian Jie): A young detective with a computer science degree who reads hours of camera footage for the squad.
• Xu Benxiang: The victim, twenty-one, expelled from university earlier in the year and known for the parties at his villa.
• Xie Yiqi: Xu's friend since middle school, the last person seen entering the house, and now missing.
• Research Topics: Three topics as in section six. (1) Investigation under surveillance: how the novel turns camera footage into both evidence and blind spot (Lyon 2007; Foucault 1977). (2) Black-gold politics and campaign pressure: the councilor, the gang, and the party as a network of favors (Chin 2003). (3) Private revenge and the courts: a councilor who vows to find the killer before the police do (Jacoby 1983).
• Six Dimensions: Readability high; Mystery high; Literary medium; Social medium-high; Local setting medium; Symbolism medium.
• About the Author: Shinoigo began writing crime fiction in October 2022. The author has been a finalist for the Soji Shimada Award for Mystery Fiction (8th, 2023) and the Lin Foer Award for Mystery Fiction (7th, 2024). Broken Crossroads is the author's first published novel, and four further books in the series exist in draft.

Logline

• Logline: Xu Benxiang, the illegitimate son of city councilor Li Jianyi, is found bound and dead in his bathtub, in a gated house that no camera saw anyone enter for seven days.