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. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems.
At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same public school. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi eventually left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka.
As Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers' relationship was very different that they claimed, that they were anything but best friends. But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the killer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded. And if Kaga isn't able to uncover and prove why the murder was committed, then the truth may never come out.
Malice is one of the bestselling—the most acclaimed—novel in Keigo Higashino's series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga, one of the most popular creations of the bestselling novelist in Asia.
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. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems.
At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same public school. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi eventually left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka.
As Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers' relationship was very different that they claimed, that they were anything but best friends. But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the killer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded. And if Kaga isn't able to uncover and prove why the murder was committed, then the truth may never come out.
Malice is one of the bestselling—the most acclaimed—novel in Keigo Higashino's series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga, one of the most popular creations of the bestselling novelist in Asia.
Reviews-
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November 24, 2014
A nearly perfect example of the classic deduction-based mystery novel, Higashino’s artfully constructed tale begins with the murder of bestselling author Kunihiko Hidaka in a locked office of his locked home. His body is discovered by his wife, Rie, and his friend from boyhood, Osamu Nonoguchi. The latter narrates some of the novel, but most of it is taken from the notes of the police detective assigned to the case, Kyochiro Kaga, an investigator with Sherlock Holmes’s eye for detail and the patience and dogged determination of a bank auditor. He quickly settles on a prime suspect, whose confession is just the beginning of a unique, extremely clever cat-and-mouse game that continues to the book’s satisfying conclusion. Woodman, a theater and television actor (Cymbeline, Sex in the City), thankfully shies away from Japanese stereotypes. The main two voices both lack accents and suggest intelligence and formal education, but differ in subtle ways. As the sleuth confronts witnesses who are male, female, outgoing, subdued, friendly, and uncooperative, Woodman displays his impressive versatility. A Minotaur hardcover. -
Bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found murdered shortly after a visit from his best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Police detective Kyoichiro Kaga investigates the case. As the story is told in alternating first-person narratives by Kaga and Nonoguchi, narrator Jeff Woodman expertly differentiates the two so there is never any confusion for the listener. Kaga is portrayed as calm, soft spoken, and steely. Nonoguchi is more outgoing and manipulative. Although the murderer is exposed early on, Kaga continues to hunt for a motive and explores multiple theories, including plagiarism and bullying in Japanese schools. Woodman's narration is compelling and clear throughout this twisty puzzle. He never hesitates with the Japanese names and lends an authentic air to this "whydunit," translated from Japanese. A.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from August 4, 2014
Set in 1996, Higashino’s first Kyoichiro Kaga novel to be translated into English is as fiendishly clever as The Devotion of Suspect X (2011), the first in his Detective Galileo series. Kaga finds that he has a personal connection to a murder case. Popular novelist Kunihiko Hidaka was strangled in his home, in some unspecified part of Japan, not long after a visit from his old friend Osamu Nonoguchi, who was also Kaga’s colleague when the detective was a teacher. Nonoguchi, one of two potential suspects, has no obvious motive for committing the crime, unlike the other suspect, Miyako Fujio. A few years earlier, Hidaka wrote a successful novel featuring a nasty lead character, a thinly disguised version of Miyako’s brother, Masayo. Higashino offers one twist after another, all of which touch on the theme suggested by the book’s title. Readers will marvel at the artful way the plot builds to the solution of Hidaka’s murder.
