The Odd Step

Colonel Doan Trong Kien returns from war with a wooden leg, profound deafness in one ear, and a hand still steady from his days carrying a rifle. He opens a private detective office in an old Hanoi alley, taking cases that no one else considers worth investigating: a woman who vanishes after a storm, a child declared dead before birth, and a nameless body pulled from the Red River. With former military doctor Nguyen Ngoc Yen and a disgraced young policeman at his side, Kien follows each crime to the buried corners of the city—and learns that a man can stand even after losing half his body.