Born in 1982, Xu Lei now lives in Hangzhou, the most beautiful city in China. To his Chinese fans, he is better known by his pen name: Nanpai Sanshu. Originally engaged in international commerce, he once ran a foreign trade enterprise, and his days were filled with negotiating with American clients over every little thing. In his spare time he loved to read horror and suspense novels. Bored after having consumed nearly all of the good books in those two genres, he decided to write his own suspense serial: The Grave Robbers' Chronicles. To his great surprise, he turned famous overnight, becoming China's most popular suspense novelist. Nanpai Sanshu, or "Uncle Three," is the name of a character from The Grave Robbers' Chronicles, and that Xu Lei chose it as his pen name both demonstrates the connection he has to his work and the free and easy way in which he writes.
Since becoming an author, his real life has become like something out of a novel: his fans have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain, and now they harangue him online to write new book after new book; he was even called up by an actual grave robber who wanted to correct some of the inaccuracies in his work. Everyday he has editors following one step behind, urging him to finish his manuscripts as fast as he can. At this point in his life, he has no choice but to redouble his efforts, writing more novels of even higher quality to offer as tribute to his many readers. To date, he has published Chinese editions of The Grave Robbers' Chronicles, Books 1-8, Dark Prospects, Books 1 and 2, and War of the Furious River, Books 1 and 2, and this last is now being adapted into a movie. Among these, Book 1 of The Grave Robbers' Chronicles and Book 1 of Dark Prospects have both been published in English. But Dark Prospects is a very different beast than that earlier series. After three years of painstaking labor, Xu Lei has crafted a pair of novels in which every suspenseful detail fits together, ultimately leading to the solution to the mystery at the heart of the story. It is a masterpiece of suspense, one that will have readers happily racking their brains as they try to figure out just how it's all going to end.
