* 2022 Taipei Book Fair Award

When police detectives are sent to a posh mansion to investigate the disappearance of the second son of a wealthy tycoon, they inadvertently uncover clues pointing to the cover-up of an orphanage child-abuse scandal.

Dear Accomplice starts from a kidnapping investigation. Chang Chen-Tung, the head of a restaurant chain and second son of a wealthy business tycoon, has disappeared, and police detectives have been sent to the Chang family mansion, known as Whitehall, to investigate. There, they discover that while Whitehall might appear dignified from the outside, its interior hides all manner of eyebrow-raising activities: fraternal power struggles, secretive servants, and the shell-shocked wife of the missing brother who may be losing her grip on reality.


The kidnapping investigation brings to light a suppressed case of child abuse at an orphanage. As the detectives follow the trail of clues, they find the two cases are more deeply intertwined than they originally thought. The wife of the missing brother is one of the victims in the child abuse case, and she is bound to her fellow victims by a bond that runs deeper than blood, and which appears intimately connected to the kidnapping. What is the horrific secret that connects the orphanage to Whitehall, and what role does the wife of the missing man play in all of this?


Shifting between multiple perspectives, and incorporating the testimony of police detectives, family members, servants, and others related to the cases, the novel is a densely populated stage of competing voices. With tight pacing and sharply-honed prose, author Chen Xue constructs a narrative seething with internal tensions, leveraging her rich cast of characters to explore the contradictions of human behavior within the context of moral dilemmas and a fracturing family. Initially, the lavish luxury of Whitehall seems far removed from the stark conditions of a failing orphanage, but what ultimately brings these two worlds together is a past so dark that no one dares to speak of it.