Earlier this year, a novel, Wrath of Heaven, took Beijing by storm. The 492-page pot-boiler, written under a pseudonym, lifted the lid off a sensational Beijing scandal, just as "Anonymous" revealed the inside story of President Clinton's 1992 election campaign in Primary Colours.
It has everything: sex, lies, videotapes, sudden death and corruption reaching right into the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.
Now the real-life version of one of Wrath of Heaven's main characters has been sent to prison for a long stretch. Chen Xiatong, a Beijing hotel manager portrayed in the book as "adept at scheming" and a "money worshipper" has been given 12 years by a Beijing court on charges which have not been made public.
Chen is a "princeling", the son of a high official, and his imprisonment this week may be the prelude to the locking-up of a host of Beijing officials and associates who are under investigation in the multi-million dollar bribery and corruption scandal that shook Beijing in 1995.
President Jiang Zemin has described guandao (official corruption) as a "virus" that threatens the very existence of the Communist Party and he is expected to launch a new anti-corruption drive at the 15th Party Conference in the autumn.
Chen Xiatong's father is Chen Xitong, the Beijing party chief who was sacked when the scandal broke, thus becoming the first member of the Chinese Politburo to be removed for corruption. He is currently under house arrest and said to be refusing to co-operate with prosecutors.
The firing of Chen Xitong, one of the hardliners behind the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy students in 1989, immediately followed the suicide of Beijing's vice-mayor, Wang Bao sen, who shot himself in the head for reasons never fully explained.
The scandal involved Capital Iron and Steel Works and a collapsed pyramid investment scheme in Wuxi. Another "princeling", Zhou Beifang, son of the head of the steel giant, was convicted last November of corruption involving the equivalent of £800,000. At the same trial, four Beijing officials, including Chen Xitong's private secretary, were given sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment.
Details of the corruption charges and the extent of the involvement of top officials have, however, been kept secret while the investigation goes on. Even the 12-year sentence on Chen jnr, who managed the New Century Hotel in Beijing and was allegedly entangled in property dealings, has yet to be reported in the mainstream Chinese media.
The void was filled by Wrath of Heaven, printed by an obscure publishing house in Inner Mongolia. It describes a fictional city - Beijing is not mentioned - where the party chief, his son, and the vicemayor share a television presenter as their mistress. It is common gossip in Beijing that in real life Wang was having an affair with a television personality. Chen snr was also accused in official documents of keeping a mistress for six years and giving her gifts of money and houses.
The book's hero, the chief of the city's anti-corruption bureau, investigates the death of the vicemayor, and believes at first that he was murdered. He discovers that the Chens persuaded Wang to act as scapegoat when the corruption scandal broke. Wang agreed to be the "fall-guy" on condition he could keep an incriminating document signed by Chen snr as an assurance he would not be prosecuted. But the Chens wanted the paper back.
They resorted to blackmail to get it. Chen jnr sent a videotape taken by a hidden camera to a television station, showing Wang making love to his mistress in a hotel room. Wang's reaction was to shoot himself.
There is no way of knowing how much of the seamier parts are based on fact but the author has an extraordinarily detailed knowledge of previous scandals which have accompanied China's move to a market-oriented economy. To give the fictional account authenticity, details are included of other actual corruption cases involving "princelings" who used influence and access to line their pockets on a large scale.
The book was an instant best seller but the investigative novelist, who wrote it under the name, Fang Wen, may not, like the writer of Primary colours, make a fortune. The Chinese authorities banned Wrath of Heaven soon after the first 5,000-copy print run appeared in the bookshops in February. It can still be acquired, but only as a pirated copy sold under the counter, in plain covers.