The Final Curtain brings the story of Detective Kaga to a surprising conclusion in a series of rich, surprising twists with a confounding murder in Tokyo connected to the mystery of the disappearance and death of Detective Kaga''s own mother.
A decade ago, Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga went to collect the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Years before, she ran away from her husband and son without explanation or any further contact, only to die alone in an apartment far away, leaving her estranged son with many unanswered questions.
Now in Tokyo, Michiko Oshitani is found dead many miles from home. Strangled to death, left in the bare apartment rented under a false name by a man who has disappeared without a trace. Oshitani lived far away in Sendai, with no known connection to Tokyo - and neither her family nor friends have any idea why she would have gone there.
Hers is the second strangulation death in that approximate area of Tokyo - the other was a homeless man, killed and his body burned in a tent by the river. As the police search through Oshitani''s past for any clue that might shed some light, one of the detectives reaches out to Detective Kaga for advice. As the case unfolds, an unexpected connective emerges between the murder (or murders) now and the long-ago case of Detective Kaga''s missing mother.
Praise for the Detective Kaga series
''Clever and charming'' The Sunday Times
''Keigo Higashino combines Dostoyevskian psychological realism with classic detective-story puzzles reminiscent of Agatha Christie and E.C. Bentley'' Wall Street Journal
''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'' New York Times Book Review
A thrilling and satisfying new mystery featuring Keigo Higashino''s enduringly popular Detective Galileo, first introduced in The Devotion of Suspect X
The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. But his death was no accident - Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He''d been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoka Shimauchi, but when detectives from the Homicide Squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. She''s taken time off from work, clothes and effects are missing from the apartment she shared. And when the detectives learn that she was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume that she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight - she was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared, forcing Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.
But if Sonoko didn''t kill her abusive lover, then who did? A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, it''s up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder - and even more surprisingly, reach back into his own traumatic past. Only then can he unravel not only the facts of the crime, but the helix that ties all of them together.
Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is 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, in 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.
Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend from years ago when they were both teachers. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi became a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. When Kaga suspects something is a little bit off with Nonoguchi's statement, he investigates further, ultimately executing a search warrant on Nonoguchi's apartment. There he finds evidence that shows that the two writers' relationship was very different than they claimed...
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. Which one of the two writers was ultimately guilty of malice?
When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away?
While Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly unrelated sequence of events he finds himself falling for Ayane. As his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel the most spectacular web of deceit they have ever faced...
SALVATION OF A SAINT is a magnificently complex and page-turning thriller starring international crime fiction's most enigmatic sleuth.This is essential reading for all fans of exceptional crime fiction.
A twenty-year-old murder A chain of unsolvable mysteries Can one detective solve this epic riddle? When a man is found murdered in an abandoned building in Osaka in 1973, unflappable detective Sasagaki is assigned to the case. He begins to piece together the connection of two young people who are inextricably linked to the crime; the dark, taciturn son of the victim and the unexpectedly captivating daughter of the main suspect. Over the next twenty years we follow their lives as Sasagaki pursues the case - which remains unsolved - to the point of obsession. Stark, intriguing and stylish, Journey Under the Midnight Sun is an epic mystery by the bestselling Japanese author of The Devotion of Suspect X .
From the bestselling author of The Devotion of Suspect X and Malice, comes a story about dark secrets and murder, where everyone has something to hide in a community that has everything to lose.
The third and penultimate novel in the Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series by bestselling Japanese crime writer Keigo Higashino
On the Nihonbashi Bridge in Tokyo stands the statue of a mythic beast - a kirin. One evening a man staggers onto the bridge and collapses beneath the winged creature. The patrolman on watch goes to rouse the man, who he presumes to be drunk - only to discover that the man had been stabbed in the chest. He is dead.
Meanwhile, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident nearby while trying to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.
But is he actually responsible for the crime? What is his connection to the victim? And why did the dying man drag himself from the crime scene to the Nihonbashi Bridge? Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga must piece together the answers to all of these questions in order to find the killer, but each answer he finds seems to throw up more questions ...
Taking us deep into the heart of Tokyo, and reintroducing the charming and ingenious Detective Kyoichiro Kaga, A Death in Tokyo is another mind-bending and hugely satisfying murder mystery from the modern master of classic crime.
''With its stopwatch timing, locked-room murder and perplexing abundance of alibis ... Readers are in store for plenty of surprises'' Wall Street Journal
Multiple murders. Decades apart. No solid evidence.
A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out house. There''s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn''t indicted, he returns to mock the girl''s family. And this isn''t the first time he''s been suspected of the murder of a young girl; nearly twenty years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.
The neighbourhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for an annual street festival, featuring a parade with entries from around Tokyo and Japan. During the parade, the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. His death is suspiciously convenient but the people with all the best motives have rock solid alibis. Chief Inspector Kusanagi knows that once again there is only one person who can solve this string of seemingly impossible murders: his college friend, Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo ...
A tour de force crime novel from one of the international masters of the form, where a simple murder case questions the simple notions of good and evil, guilt and redemption.
Homicide Detective Godai of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is assigned to investigate the death of a lawyer, Kensuke Shiraishi, whose body was found on a Central Tokyo riverbank. His investigations leads him to one Tatsuro Kuraki, who claims to have had limited contact with Shiraishi - but, surprising the investigators, Kuraki not only confesses to the lawyer''s murder, but another one from thirty years ago - for which another man was arrested and died in custody before trial. This brings unexpected resolution to two cases but there is one problem: to Detective Godai the confession rings false.
And Godai is not the only one who cannot accept Kuraki''s explanation of both murders and his professed motives. The confessed murderer''s son and the victim''s daughter both feel strongly that both the act and the motive claimed are untrue.
As Godai investigates further, he discovers that the relation between the murder of thirty years ago and the recent one is complex, raising multi-faceted questions of guilt and innocence. Guilt is a rich novel about crime and its aftereffects on those left behind by both the victim and perpetrator, a twisting, compelling work that will surprise and astonish.
In the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo the statue of a mythic beast - a kirin - stands guard. Late at night, the body of a murdered man, stabbed in the chest, is found under the statue of the winged beast. However, that was not the crime scene - the man was killed a few hundred feet away and his body moved to that position. The same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man. The two have no known connection. Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga is assigned to the team investigating the murder - and must bring his skills to bear to uncover what actually happened that night on the Nihonbashi bridge. Why was the murder victim moved? What, if any, connection is there between the murdered man and Yashima, the young man caught with his wallet? Kaga''s investigation takes him down dark roads to uncover what really happened - and why ...
If you knew you didn''t have long to live, who would you tell? What would you say? And how would you deliver the message?
The Keeper of the Camphor Tree starts with Reito Naoi, a man in his early 20s, being unjustly fired from his job. Enraged and fuelled by feelings of revenge, he tries to steal a valuable device from his workplace, but things don''t go to plan, and he ends up arrested.
In jail, Reito is paid an unexpected visit by a lawyer who offers to arrange for his release, if he complies with the wishes of the lawyer''s client. Seeing no alternative, Reito accepts and soon discovers that the lawyer''s client is his aunt. When Reito tells her that he has no plans for the future, she gives him an order: ''What I want you to do is to guard a camphor tree.'' And thus begins Reito''s custodianship of a camphor tree standing on the grounds of a shine - a camphor tree with a mysterious legend associated with it...
