It's always a delight for me to watch criminal investigation dramas. And it's always a murder, because the public is obsessed with the pathology of psychopaths who are obsessed with murdering young women. The team took 13 years to solve the case, hence the title - because the killer stopped murdering women during these 13 years.

I have not watched Chen Xiao on screen since A Dream of Splendour, and while he was in that other cop series with Wang Yi Bo, To Be a Hero, I couldn't remain interested enough to complete it. However, I did enjoy this drama until the last 3 episodes. From there, it seemed to me that the writers were in a rush to wrap up the series at Episode 24, so they just haphazardly threw false suspects and questionable red herrings at the audience before finally willing to reveal the actual murderer.

I enjoyed watching the characters grew as people, and as detectives during these 13 years. A rookie cop climbed the ranks to become captain of his team. He went from moderately reserved to picking up quick-temperedness from his "master" due to stress and burnouts of investigating the case. His "master", on the other hand, went from a hot-tempered detective who clung to regrets of his first love to truly appreciating his current life. He went from someone who was shut to "foreign ideas" to be more accepting of the opinions of others. I also enjoyed how the women in the male leads' lives are ever so loving, understanding and supporting. These characters are beautifully written, because while they may not be unique in everyday lives - real life is full of amazing people - they're unique in the sense that we rarely see such characters in shows.

The drama also provides, with an accurate look into what forensic technology was like at the turn of last century. Many of the scenes had investigators lament how they're so close to catching the killer, yet so far - because technology hasn't caught up enough to yield definitive evidence. Basic investigation techniques still apply, with some hilarious and creative approaches, as evidenced in the final episodes where a group of townspeople were called into the station to identify suspects on the CCTV.

Towards the end of the show, I hated how Gua Pi was harassed to the point that he snapped and killed himself, and there wasn't any culpability for that. Yeah, he's a loser, he had lots of misdeameanour charges. But harassing someone is wrong. It makes it even worse that a veteran cop did this. The show did mention that this was a big mistake that they made earlier in the episodes, but to see it played out this way only at the end didn't make it better. So no one took responsibility for this? Yang Zhe was also implicated as one of the suspects, and he was just "there" conveniently to provide insights of the weird ass art as they were close to cracking the case. The art is reminiscent of lowbrow art made popular in the 1960s (still popular today and known as pop surrealism) but they put a fictional spin on it. Anyway the whole thing is a mess towards the end.

Nevertheless, I don't regret the time spent on this drama and would recommend it to detective or criminal investigation drama fans.