Like its predecessors, The Chinese Maze Murders tells how three crimes were solved simultaneously by the famous magistrate-detective Judge Dee—justly described as 'the Sherlock Holmes of ancient China'.

The three cases occur in Lan-fang, a walled town in the western frontier of the Chinese empire. They concern the murder of a retired general in a sealed room; the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful girl; and the strange will left by a famous statesman. Ably assisted by his trusted advisor Sergeant Hoong, and his three other lieutenants, the bearded judge not only has to find his way through a veritable maze of human passions and secret plots, but also the forbidding maze in the swamp, infested by weird beasts and haunted by the ghost of its dead builder.