Thoughts on - Malice by Keigo Higashino and few recommendations
By Verse-Lavender
Keigo Higashino is honestly one of my go-to mystery writers. Most mystery stories end up following a pretty similar path: something kicks things off (a murder, a robbery, some kind of blackmail), then you and the main character slowly get pieces of info until it all clicks into a satisfying ending. But with Higashino, it feels like he doesn’t just stick to the usual rules—he plays around with them. Like, what if you already know who did it, but you’re still left guessing about the reason? As you spend more time with the two main characters and their messy history, the motives kind of come undone bit by bit. And every “confession” you get just seems to pull the plot into weirder, unexpected directions: it starts with a sudden crime, then you find out about the relationship between the teacher and his wife/author, then it circles back to the childhood bullying. It’s all really carefully put together. For anyone looking for similar stuff, Anthony Berkeley Cox does some of that too. - **The Poisoned Chocolates Case**: basically a bunch of armchair detectives trying to solve a murder, and everyone has their own answer. - **Jumping Jenny**: go in blind if you can—there’s the usual murder + suspects setup, but the solution is pretty surprising and not quite “standard.” - **Trial and Error**: what if the killer actually wants to be caught, but can’t manage to set things up so it works? - **The Eighth Detective**: this one’s by Alex Pavesi and it’s more recent. It basically tears apart the whole mystery format, so if you read it, it might ruin future murder mysteries a little by killing the surprise factor. I’d say it’s worth it when you’re just tired of the genre in general.