The Ghost Shift

In the tradition of Gorky Park, John Gapper's new thriller takes readers inside the secretive and dangerous world of modern China, as a young woman makes a haunting discovery -- one that forces her to choose between duty to her government and a desperate desire to learn the truth about herself.

This wasn't just a body in a field. The corpse's shape was hers -- same length, same curves. Then she knew, and everything else receded to nothingness. All she could see was a woman with the same nose, the same eyes, and the same face.

Her twin.

As an up-and-coming agent of the Commission for Discipline Inspection, Song Mei probes political corruption, not mysterious deaths. But that changes when she arrives on the scene of a grim police investigation and is confronted with a crime -- and a victim -- impossible to ignore. Despite strict orders and threats from superiors, Mei knows she can not turn away.

Breaking protocol, Mei undertakes a covert search for the truth about the mystery woman's death -- and life -- by following in her footsteps from a factory plagued by worker suicides to a luxury hotel dealing in high-end escorts to an American home haunted by tragedy. But when Mei crosses paths with an ex-CIA operative on a shadowy mission of his own, her personal quest takes a jarring turn into political and industrial espionage that pits both agents against the highest ranks of communism and capitalism.