The crime is investigated by Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga, who suspects Nonoguchi from the start but struggles to find a motive for the crime. Was Nonoguchi so jealous of Hidaka’s commercial success that he wanted to kill him? And why does Nonoguchi keep hinting that the death of Hidaka’s first wife may not have been accidental? How does Hidaka’s new wife, Rie, fit into the scheme of things? His killer is an old childhood friend, Osamu Nonoguchi, a former teacher turned struggling writer, who strangles him to death on the eve of his departure. A widower and bestselling author, he has recently remarried and is about to relocate to Canada to embark on a new life. Malice tells the story of three men: two professional rivals, one of whom murders the other, and the police detective who investigates the crime. His follow-up novel, Salvation of a Saint, presented a similar conundrum.īut in Higashino’s latest crime novel, Malice, he takes it a step further: the book is not merely a howdunit, but a whydunit. Higashino does not follow the normal conventions of the genre. In his cult sensation novel, The Devotion of Suspect X- one of the best crime novels I’ve ever read - the reader knows who committed the crime from the outset, but not how it was carried out.

If you think crime novels are generally formulaic whodunits, then let me introduce you to Japanese writer Keigo Higashino. Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the writer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded.Fiction – paperback Little, Brown 281 pages 2014. Nonoguchi confesses to the murder, but that's only the beginning of the story. There he finds evidence that shows that the two writers' relationship was very different than the two claimed. But Kaga thinks something is a little bit off with Nonoguchi's statement and investigates further, ultimately executing a search warrant on Nonoguchi's apartment. Kaga went on to join the police force while Osamu Nonoguchi left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same high school. Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend.

His body is found in his office, in a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver.

Malice by Keigo Higashino