余華, 河邊的錯誤

[Geiko]

余華 is a very popular writer in these forums, some of his works have their own thread (活着、兄弟、我没有自己的名字), and due to his simple enough style of writing he is often mentioned as a good option for a first novel in Chinese. The other day I stumbled upon one of his shorter stories, 河邊的錯誤, and since I'm enjoying it so much, I decided to write a post about it.

As many of his novels, its style is very straightforward, he hardly ever uses chengyu. It's pretty short (41 pages in my e-reader), and I've just begun it, but the plot is quite intriguing: a dead body is found by the river and the police has to solve the crime.

The main characters are:
么四婆婆
馬哲
小李
瘋子

Some vocabulary (mostly related to crime):
民警 : civil police
死者 : the dead
案發 : to occur / to discover (a crime)
案件 : legal case
作案 : to commit a crime
疑點 : doubtful point
派出所 : police station
法醫 : forensic investigator
沾滿 : covered (in sweat, mud, blood...)
安眠酮 : methaqualone
創口 : a wound
嫌疑犯 : a suspect
刑警 (刑事警察) : criminal police
偵破 : to solve a crime, investigate
凶器 : murder weapon
現場 : crime scene
證據 : evidence

扳机 : gun trigger

拘留所 : detention center / prison

As I said, I strongly recommend it, it's a light read, short, quite easy and very interesting!