¡°The incident took place on April 16, 1996, a Tuesday.¡± This meditative, clever novel from the author of 2011¡¯s ¡°The Devotion of Suspect X¡± begins with a journal entry by Osamu Nonoguchi, a children¡¯s author who happens upon the body of his friend and fellow writer, Kunihiko Hidaka, facedown in his office.

Malice, by Keigo Higashino Translated by Alexander O. Smith.
Minotaur Books, Fiction.

A paperweight has been used to bludgeon him before his strangulation, but his office was locked. Both Nonoguchi and Hidaka¡¯s wife Rie, also present when the corpse was found, seem to have perfect alibis.

Here we are in a classic locked-room mystery, and we soon learn that there is far more to the friends¡¯ relationship than collegiality. Nonoguchi becomes a suspect in an investigation by the tireless, obsessive police detective Kyoichiro Kaga; their conversations make up a delicious game of cat and mouse, which intensifies as Kaga finds a collection of manuscripts that are not what they first seem.

The story, written in an unusual fashion as a series of journal notes by these two characters, centers on the themes of author rivalry and the long-term effects of childhood trauma. Higashino¡¯s specialty is building carefully wound backstories to his plots and imbuing his main characters with psychological depth, a consolation for readers who may bemoan the paltry descriptions of minor characters and locations such as Tokyo.

But the tale is breezily translated by Alexander O. Smith and makes for a grabby read as Kaga, convinced of the murderer¡¯s identity about halfway through the story, delves deeper and deeper into the killing, its outlandish motive and the source of an ineffable malice that hangs over the crime.