In mainland China the most popular subgenre is "detective fiction" (Chinese: 侦探推理小说; pinyin: zhēntàn tuīlǐ xiǎoshuō; lit.
The plots usually begin with a description of the crime (often including realistic detail of contemporary life) and culminated in the exposure of the deed and the punishment of the guilty.
In the Song Dynasty the growth of commerce and urban society created a demand for a new kind of crime fiction–namely gong'an fiction that focused on entertaining the upper and merchant class.
Featured in hundreds of stories, Bao became the archetype of the incorruptible official in a society in which miscarriages of justice in favour of the rich and powerful were all too common.
Not all crime stories have happy endings, and some were evidently written with the aim of exposing the brutal methods of corrupt judges who–after accepting bribes–would extract false confessions by torture and condemned innocent people to death.
[4] Short story writer Cheng Xiaoqing (程小青 ) was the most successful and prolific author of original Chinese crime fiction during the Republican Era in mainland China.
Cheng Xiaoqing's contemporary, Sun Liaohong (孫了紅) also created a series of Chinese detective novels which are said to have been modeled on the Arsène Lupin stories.
He Jiahong (何家弘) was born in 1953 and is a professor of criminal law at Renmin University and was the part-time Deputy Director of the Department of Dereliction of Duty and Infringement of Human Rights in the Supreme People's Procuratorate from 2006 to 2008.
阿乙 , born in 1976, is a former police officer who writes darkly realistic crime fiction about migrant workers and the lower strata of mainland Chinese society.
In the 1950s, many non-leftist writers decided to reside in Hong Kong to avoid the political stance of the newly established People's Republic of China.
[11] The first Chinese crime fiction written by Taiwanese writer Li Yitao (李逸濤) in 1909 was about a detective story called Deep Hatred (恨海), published by Kanbun Taiwan nichinichi shinpō (漢文臺灣日日新報), but the work has not been finished yet.
Her China-set Mei Wang Mystery Series are published in over 20 languages worldwide and include The Eye of Jade, Paper Butterfly and The House of Golden Spirit.