《Profiler》

A perfect mix between Chinese versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Silence of the Lambs. Three young women are found dead one after another in Jiangbin City, each horribly murdered and disemboweled in her home. Police investigations reveal that the killer is a monster who likes to mix milk together with human blood—and then drink it. Is he some kind of immortal vampire, straight out of legend? A series of four rape and murder cases surface in Changhong City. All of the victims are white-collar workers between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. A graduate student at the top of his class suddenly goes mad and begins attacking his friends and fellow classmates. After a succession of seemingly unrelated homicides occurring not far from the city, the police are still completely at a loss. A television viewer sends in a letter with a sketch of what he claims is the murderer's face. Intrigued, the chief of the Public Security Bureau seeks out the author of the letter, and to his surprise it is a reticent, anti-social university student—Fang Mu. After the killer is executed, however, another spate of homicides begins to crop up. Was Fang Mu mistaken? Following deductive reasoning, he realizes that the ultimate victim will be Fang Mu himself. Can he "profile" this monster and discover his true identity before it's too late? Editorial Review ------------------------ Author Lei Mi has been called the king of the Chinese crime novel. Employed at China Criminal Police University as a teacher of criminal psychology, he has a clear insight into all sorts of criminal behavior. Early in 2007, with the publishing of the Psychological Criminals series (which, along with the prequel The Seven Readers, has been called the Fang Mu series by readers), this book's performance was no more than mediocre at first in a Chinese marketplace that had grown accustomed to European and American crime novels. Still, a small number of readers became deeply fascinated by it. Before they were formally published, the second book, Skinner's Box, and the third book, Blade of Silence, had already gained 600,000 fans by word of mouth alone. By December 2012, City Lights, the fourth book in the Psychological Criminals series, was hot off the press and had climbed straight to fifth place in Amazon China's new release rankings list in the suspense category. In this series of novels, you will read about an unprecedented new master sleuth. Fang Mu. He is sensitive, fragile, and deeply afraid of death, but has been blessed with innate skill and an intuition that allows him to solve crimes with almost miraculous proficiency. His instinctual process of elimination causes him to be drawn inexorably down into a cruel whirlpool of murder cases, and during a constant battle of wits with the killers, Fang Mu begins to discover that he has his own dark side, deep within his psyche. He seems to be no different from them; his blood flows with all sorts of insane but somehow superlative criminal thoughts. At the same time that he uncovers the identity of a killer, he also reveals his own indecisiveness and loss of self-control. Using a deft pen planted firmly in the foundations of realism, a heavy flavor of the aesthetics of crime, trains of thought and reasoning that are totally different from what ordinary people might be used to, and reflections on ethics that are truly thought-provoking, the author has provided readers with a new perspective from which to understand a realistic version of China society.

Lei Mi, formerly known as Liu Peng, a teacher of criminal psychology at China Criminal Police University, is well versed in both criminal psychology and forensic science. His career has given him insight into all sorts of crime, perhaps more so than most people learn in a lifetime. Having become known across the internet for psychological thrillers such as his Criminal Minds series, he has attracted countless fans. His major works include The Seven Readers (published as a serial novel from July to September 2006 in Legends from Today and Ancient Times: End of the Month Stories, and won their prize for best suspense story of 2006), Profiler, Skinner's Box, Blade of Silence, and City Lights. Lei Mi currently teaches in Shenyang.