How Do You Stop A Conspiracy?

I started reading A Case Of Two Cities a couple of weeks ago. It's a detective story that takes place in modern day Shanghai. An experienced police detective is assigned the job of tracking down the confederates of a corrupt businessman, no matter where the investigation leads. Specifically, several members of the "party" are probably involved. This is going to be ticklish. I mean, how do you track down the corrupt when they are part and parcel of the whole fabric of society? The previous inspector assigned to this case was murdered, and the first person who talks to him gets the same.

This guy is also a poet and he has published a book which, surprisingly, has met with some commercial success. A couple of days into his investigation he finds out that one of the party higher ups bought 10,000 copies of his book before it even left the printer. Looks like a bribe now, even though he didn't know anything about it. So now he has to be very careful. He doesn't want to end up dead, and he doesn't want to be accused of corruption, but he still has the job of ferreting out those who are corrupt. The outlook got to be so dismal that I had to put the book down, and I'm only a third of the way through it.

I imagine I will try to finish it just because I will want to see if he does manage to expose the corrupt, and if he does, if he manages to do it without some plot sleight-of-hand by the author.