The Zheng Pyre

When a Spanish tourist vanishes in the reclusive city-state of Xin Zheng—a community preserving the ancient laws of Spring and Autumn Zheng—her brother, Barcelona private eye and gourmand Pere Camps, travels there to find her. He discovers that a secret society, the “Fire Virtue Society,” has been exacting brutal justice on perceived wrongdoers, inspired by the legendary minister Zi Chan. But their righteous flames have begun to consume the innocent, including his sister. As Pere digs deeper, he realizes that the society’s leaders engineered the simultaneous deaths of the city’s Duke Ding and Prime Minister Zi Dashu to seize power, and that his own quest for vengeance may ignite an inferno that devours everything it sought to protect. A Montalbán-style noir weaving political intrigue, culinary digression, and the peril of unchecked justice.