Long Night Before Dawn is the first novel I read. I have to say that it is a better novel about the theme of high IQ crime reasoning in China.
The full text of the novel is smooth and clear. The stories of several parts seem to be independent, but they are naturally connected, and there is no sudden appearance.
The novel begins with a drunken lawyer, Juck Zhang, trying to pass the security check of Hangzhou subway with Jiang Yang's body. Imagine, in public, another body, in a crowded subway station, what kind of influence will it have? Shocked the city! At this point, the atmosphere of this story is so grand, and the fermentation on the Internet is overwhelming. The client Juck Zhang, a famous criminal defense lawyer, and the deceased Jiang Yang, a former prosecutor, were later sentenced to gambling, bribery and whoring. His sensitive identity and unusual location of the crime attracted everyone's attention. Things seem to be going in the expected direction. As expected, Juck Zhang admitted and confessed the so-called crime. If the whole incident is closed according to common sense, the chain of evidence is complete and solid. However, this is the genius of the author. Everything changed dramatically in the first trial: Juck Zhang overturned all the charges against him and threw out heavy evidence that he was on a business trip in Beijing at the time of the crime, which really surprised everyone. The author's ingenious design of such a scene has aroused the appetite of readers, and no matter who they are, they will have the desire to read at once. At this time, the author seems to have written a story about college students teaching in rural areas. Hou Guiping, an upright junior majoring in law, went to a remote rural area to teach in order to avoid exams and studies. After a girl named Weng Xiangmei committed suicide in his class, he fell into deep remorse and began his just road of collecting evidence and exposing crimes. In a remote and backward rural area, people's legal consciousness is indifferent and the road is unimaginable. What kind of bitter battle is this for Hou Guiping? Unexpectedly, this is a tragic ending. Hou Guiping committed suicide and drowned. Can a person drown with 150 ml of water in his stomach? Seeing this, I am very angry. I hated the judicial structure at that time, and I hated those who did nothing when they clearly found the doubt. Juck Zhang is one of them? So far in the novel, there are two independent stories, one is a case that was closed more than ten years ago, and the other is a case of "murder" by a criminal defense lawyer. The author skillfully connected the two stories, thus presenting us with everything that happened later. This also restored the heart of being in full bloom and trying to reverse the case in the long road after graduation. In this process, a bunch of characters appeared one by one, including forensic doctor, his daughter Wu, Pingkang Zhu Wei, lawyer Juck Zhang (Hou Guiping's teacher, Hou Guiping's girlfriend Li Jing's husband), Interpol captain Li Jianguo, Ding who framed Hou Guiping, Sun Hongyun of Kahn Enterprise and so on. These men did their jobs, and Yue Jun, a small stool, also strung together the whole incident. We gradually understand that this is a case that spans more than ten years. Everything that Zhang Chao did was to reverse Hou Guiping's conviction, but he did not make such a request. He just asked for a paternity test. Yes, this is also his genius as a criminal defense lawyer. If he asks to reverse his conviction, there will be great resistance at first, and he doesn't have enough chips in his hand to ask the task force to do so. He can only retreat and make a small request that seems relatively easy to do. It was this critical appraisal that turned the whole incident upside down. The plot design is ingenious and interlocking, which makes readers feel relieved when the truth comes out. The ending of the whole book does not jump out of reality. We should not be punished or investigated for officials jumping off buildings in depression and businesses dying of illness. When we sigh the ending, it's hard to know for a long time. But at the end of the novel, there is a sentence
Let's see the dawn break through the night, and the night will never be clear!
However, we should also see that this book also has some unsatisfactory places. For example, some plots are described too deliberately, such as "in the process of escape, he took off his glasses and threw them in front of him, deliberately stepping on them." This plot is to prevent two witnesses in Beijing from recognizing Juck Zhang as a lawyer at first sight. Although it echoes back and forth, it is a bit like adding holes. This technique may be more suitable for scripting. Another place,
The content of this part can be known at a glance by people with a little legal knowledge, and it is suspected of luring confessions. In the following description,
Explain this problem, or deliberately too obvious. When readers want to question the author's purpose in writing this part, there will always be explanations in the following chapters. On the one hand, it shows that the author understands the reader's ideas, on the other hand, it also shows that the author has not copied legal knowledge, at least he has studied it carefully.
A plot in the book is debatable. When Juck Zhang was sent to the detention center for custody, the case handlers applied for a single room for him. This situation is unreasonable at present. According to prison administrators, for the sake of safety, people involved in major cases are generally not held alone. The setting of solitary confinement room is not suitable for this kind of person. Of course, the situation is different from place to place, just for the needs of the story, not bad. In addition, Jiang Yang and others also designed such ingenious methods to promote the process of the case. While highlighting that this is a high IQ crime, we can also look at it from another side. With such a high IQ, Hou Guiping could not get justice after more than ten years. You can imagine how difficult it is. It should also be noted that the author has repeatedly mentioned Nie Haifen's unjust case caused by extorting a confession by torture, which shows that while they feel difficult, they also see hope and confidence. More than ten years of persistence shows that they are also determined to wait for the right time. Of course, I also question why there has been no progress for more than a decade, but a group of people have been implicated. .
Part of the plot seems unnecessary. Wu Jian was rated as an excellent prosecutor in this chapter. He has been immersed in officialdom for decades. It is enough to show that Hou Guiping's conviction does not deserve such a reward. Humble opinion! Mayor Xia's illegitimate child, why take his surname? Will such a person be born in reality? Even if it is born, how can it be named after him? Unreasonable. On the other hand, Ge Li's children knew about it when Hou Guiping was still alive. Why hasn't anyone investigated this case from this aspect for more than ten years because mental illness can't be investigated?
While understanding the plot of the whole novel, we don't have time to make a detailed argument, and it seems that we can't find any loopholes. A seemingly perfect mystery novel is not true just because it feels too perfect, and there is still a gap between it and Keigo Higashino's mystery novel.
The overall story of this novel has the shadow of "stove", and the story outline is basically the same. Even the ending is only noticed when people die. We can compare the two. This novel connects the typical events in China, starting with being caught and dumped, and approaching the core of the story step by step. A criminal mystery novel, which involves human nature, officials and businessmen, justice and persistence, enriches the characters and better tells the story for more than ten years. Without the feeling of patchwork, Zijin Chen is naturally smooth and deserves to be called a mystery novelist.
What would the story be if Jiang Yang was not suffering from terminal lung cancer?
It's still a good work.