“Keigo Higashino again proves his mastery of the diabolical puzzle mystery with Malice, a story with more turns, twists, switchbacks and sudden stops than a Tokyo highway during Golden Week.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Mind-boggling, fascinating, dark, masterpiece – I’m falling short of adjectives to describe what is quite simply Keigo Higashino’s best work(have read all 4 of them now).
First things first – From whatever I’ve read in his novels, half of the Japanese school boys should be thrown inside the East China Sea. Such crazy people, I tell you. All the incidents in all his novels are disgustingly nauseating.
Motive, evidence & opportunity – the three key ingredients of every murder. As a detective, you should be quite triumphant when you have all of them along with a full confession and wrap up the murder case. Or does it sound too good to be true? That’s what drives Detective Kaga to dig into the past, re analyse all the evidence while he tries to figure out the truth. And his adversary is a writer and so is the man murdered. It was fascinating to read this novel written in the form of first person accounts of the accused(rather the confessor)and the Detective.
Watch out for all the small little things mentioned here and there which may seem irrelevant but will have a huge significance at the end.
Anything I didn’t like about the novel? Ofcourse the blasphemous statement adorning all his book covers – ‘ The Japanese Steig Larsson’ . I mean wtf! Anyway, I’ve ranted about this enough on all other reviews.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Malice is his best ever work. Do not miss it.
5/5.
Reviewed by:
Aditya Singh
Added 12th February 2016
