Mysterious and Absurd Cases of the Tang Dynasty

Chang'an in the Kaiyuan years of the Tang Dynasty is at the height of its prosperity, and underneath that prosperity a string of cases turns up that nobody can explain. Shentu Baiqi is an investigator without an official post. He works the cases together with Yao Yuan, who is Deputy Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, and with Mu Guiyi. Each case leads back to a living person and to what that person wanted, whether position or someone they could not give up, and the truth the three of them dig up is on behalf of the dead, with whatever justice follows done quietly. There is a rite performed over a ghost infant, a coffin held down with wards, a town its people say is haunted, wooden puppets that kill, and a contract under which a man pawns his wife.