Malice

Higashino uses multiple points of view to unravel a complex mystery, and yet I never felt lost.

I read the novel on a flight to Tokyo this summer, my first visit to Japan. After discovering this author a couple years ago, I devoured his Detective Galileo series, and wanted to once again immerse myself in Japanese culture as revealed via a murder mystery.

This is book one in the Detective Kaga series. Higashino is one of my all time favorite authors because he delves so deeply into peoples’ hearts and souls, and their reactions to the victim and the crime.… show more.

I love mysteries that play with form and narration. Malice was published in 1996 by Keigo Higashino and it’s unlike any mystery that I’ve ever read.

There are multiple stories being told at different levels and I loved the way the puzzle unravels. It’s a locked room mystery set in Tokyo that midway through the narrative switches from being about who the murderer is to why they did it. The atmosphere is chilling and almost sterile, like a flickering fluorescent light.

Best read on a redeye flight with a web of city lights spread out beneath you—or on a commuter… show more.