Astrologist

Don’t laugh at my suggestion. I do have a reasonably elaborated plan for this very character that I create.

It goes like this: Shao Bowen (邵伯溫) is a famous astrologist and a good friend of Inspector Japp, who encountered difficult criminal cases – mostly murders – every now and then.

And you expect that much. Each time, when Japp confides his case to Shao, the astrologist could – by his obscure non-scientific means – tell immediately who the criminal is. The problem is, the answer is usually so shocking that even Shao finds it difficult to believe his own deduction. As a result, he ends up keeping that information to himself and goes around to gather evidence against whoever he is suspecting – obviously with a theatrical and gratifying result each time.

You may argue my plot is against the rule of the traditional detective story, where you need to deduce the answer from all available evidence. However, I must beg to disagree. Most of the famous detectives in crime fictions actually fix up the suspect from the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the same habit often dominates our behaviour in clinical practice as well as medical research.

PS. Bowen, the name of my fictitious detective, certainly comes from Liu Bowen (劉伯溫), the legendary astrologist of the Ming Empire. I derived Shao, the family name, from Shao Kangjie (邵康節) – a philosopher at the Sung Dynasty, and, in my opinion, the most important astrologist in the history of China.