The Chinese Nail Murders is a gong'an detective novel written by Robert van Gulik and set in Imperial China (roughly speaking the Tang dynasty).

It is a fiction based on the real character of Judge Dee (Ti Jen-chieh or Di Renjie), a magistrate and statesman of the Tang court, who lived roughly 630–700 BC.

Judge Dee soon comes under pressure from higher-ranking officials to end his investigation.

A nail murder was a motif of crime in ancient China.

[1] The case of the headless corpse was based on an actual 13th-century Chinese murder casebook.