There are three cases in this book. The first might be called "The Double Murder at Dawn"; the case describes the hazardous life of the traveling silk merchant and a murder which is committed to gain wealth.
The second, "The Strange Corpse", takes place in a small village and addresses a crime of passion which proves hard to solve. The criminal is a very determined woman.
The third case, "The Poisoned Bride", addresses the poisoning of a local scholar's daughter, who marries the son of the former administrator of the district and dies mysteriously on her wedding night. This case contains a surprising twist in its solution.
All three cases are solved by Judge Dee, the district magistrate, detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped up into one person. His powers are vast, and some of the things he can do would be manifestly illegal in a Western judicial system - such as grossly intimidating a witness or suspect, up to and including the extraction of a confession by torture. In contrast, making a false judgement could be far more perilous to a magistrate like Dee than to a modern western judge. Exhuming a dead body without proving the dead person was murdered would be an act of sacrilege which would cost the Judge his job (which very nearly happens to Dee in the course of the book). If a magistrate sentenced a person to death and the executed was afterwards proved to have been innocent, the magistrate would be himself executed - having made an honest mistake would not be sufficient to save him. Should an innocent person die under torture, both the judge ordering the torture and all members of staff administering the torture would suffer capital punishment - and members of Dee's staff urging him to cease torture when the suspect proves obdurate shows they are aware of that dire risk to themselves.
The three cases offer a glimpse into the lives of different classes in traditional Chinese society: adventurous traders who travel vast distances along the trade routes up and down the land of China, and who are sometimes targeted by robbers and sometimes form dubious partnerships or turn outright robbers themselves; the small-scale shopkeepers and townspeople, who live within a narrow circumscribed life of routine which some find stifling; the gentry of literati, who by long tradition were considered as the land's rulers and so considered themselves.
Any official departure of Judge Dee from the court compound (which also includes his private living quarters) is done with fanfare, accompanied by a large retinue of constables and officials. This approach is sometimes useful - especially when suspects are to be overawed and intimidated, or recalcitrant local officials intimidated into fully cooperating with an investigation. Sometimes, however, Judge Dee finds it expedient to go out incognito and carry out an investigation in disguise. He carries off very well the disguise of an itinerant physician; as Van Gulik points out, knowledge of medicine was expected of Chinese literati. Conversely, Judge Dee is less successful in passing himself off as a merchant, a member of a completely different social class; an observant merchant quickly unmasks him as what he is, a member of the Literati elite. Fortunately, it turns out that this observant merchant is not the wanted criminal; on the contrary, he is an honest merchant, with his own accounts to settle with the criminal, and becomes a very valuable ally.
Judge Dee acts according to very strict ethics, regarding himself as duty bound to enforce justice, seek out, and severely punish all wrong-doers, high or low. Some remarks made by various characters and references made to other magistrates make clear that Dee's conduct is far from universal among District Judges. Others of Dee's colleagues might have been more lenient with a suspected murderer when he was a member of a rich family and an outstanding student of literature; or would not have exerted themselves to catch the murderer of a "small" shop-keeper in a minor provincial town; or would have thought more of lining their own pockets than of seeing justice done. Judge Dee's honesty and probity were proverbial - which is why tales were told of him even more than a thousand years after his death.
