4 Stars
This
Japanese mystery is a must-read.
Osamu
Nonoguchi, a children’s author, discovers the body of Kunihiko Hidaka, a
childhood friend and fellow author.
Detective Kyochiro Kaga investigates and soon comes to suspect Nonoguchi
though he seems to have a perfect alibi.
The difficulty is identifying a motive.
Kaga begins digging into the past and uncovers startling information
about the two men’s school days and their literary careers. But theory after theory about the motive proves
to be incorrect. Will the case ever be
satisfactorily solved?
As a
whodunit, the story is a locked room mystery which is solved rather quickly. It is when the book becomes a whydunit that it
excels. The book could really be
identified as a study of the psychology of murder. And what it reveals is chilling.
This struck
me as very much a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
There is little reliance on forensics.
It is the determination and intelligence of the detective that solve the
case. The novel is narrated through a
series of journal entries kept by Kaga and Nonoguchi so the reader is given all
the information Kaga has at his disposal.
The reader is expected to be observant and try to make sense of the
clues. (Hint: if something doesn’t seem quite right, it
probably isn’t.) So many mysteries cheat
by keeping information from readers; this was a problem with the other
Higashino novels I’ve read (The Devotion
of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint). In Malice,
however, there is no such ploy so the book really challenges the reader.
Because we
learn so much background about Nonoguchi, Kaga and even Hidaka, they emerge as
characters with depth, not the flat characters often encountered in second-rate
mysteries. Kaga certainly earns the
reader’s admiration and respect, and both the victim and his murderer will garner
some sympathy.
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