A superbly constructed, gripping and deeply engaging Japanese cat and mouse murder story. A famous and highly successful writer, Kunihiko Hidaka is found murdered in his locked office. Hidaka was preparing to leave for Canada with his new wife Rie and was visited by a friend Osamu Nonoguchi, a writer and Ms Fujio, a woman who has a problem with a book Hidaka has written. The detective leading the investigation, Kyochiro Kaga recognises Osamu Nonoguchi from a previous job as a teacher in a school where they both taught. Following this classic set up of a locked room murder and a severely limited set of suspects Keigo Higashino delivers a stunning story that constantly sidesteps readers expectations and assumptions right up to the brilliant and satisfying sour conclusion.
The structure of the book is overlapping accounts written by Osamu Nonoguchi and Kyochiro Kaga that competing with each other for control of the narrative. Each of them is pushing a particular version of events from the far past and directly around the murder, each is cunningly constructed and full of hooks and telling details for the reader.
The story is smartly structured as the two leads write succeeding updates that bring in new details and subtly or not so subtly alter the narrative. Osamu Nonoguchi and Kyochiro Kaga are nicely matched, both serious, capable, confident and willing to work very hard to achieve their aims. As the story develops the deeper roots of the events start to come to light and the mutual histories of the principals becomes significant.
Keigo Higashino never takes a short cut or cheats the reader, the accounts are clearly partisan, they are consciously one sided and the reader has to decide how to read them. With persuasive skill each succeeding account leads the reader to a different view of he story, even when a conclusion appears to have been arrived at there is still more depths to be explored. This is a technical tour de force of storytelling that sets up and solves story problems with astounding grace and confidence that never shortchanges the reader. Managing this while creating such an engaging cast and credible context without any visible effort is the work of a hugely talented writer.
Keigo Higashino is very well served by the translation from Alexander O. Smith & Elye Alexander, it manages to ready smoothly in English while being clearly and audibly Japanese. At a critical moment they deliver different conversations from walk on parts that capture the crucial differences in outlook among the characters.
Malice is a great story and superb crime fiction, wonderful.
