BENGALURU: Regular readers of this page would know that I am a fan of Keigo Higashino. His is the first name I would recommend of any currently active detective fiction writer. Higashino is a bestselling Japanese writer, whose expertise is in labyrinthine and absolutely exquisite plots. The Devotion of Suspect X is perhaps Higashino’s most famous novel to the English-speaking world in which he introduces the pompous genius, Detective Galileo i.e. Professor Manabu Yukawa, a curmudgeonly brilliant professor of physics. Today, let me tell you about another of my favourite Higashino books, Akui, translated by Alexander O Smith to Malice. It features the other famous detective created by Higashino, Inspector Kyoichiro Kaga.
The story starts with a narration by Osamu Nonoguchi, a struggling writer of children’s fiction. Nonoguchi describes a recent meeting he had with his childhood friend and wildly successful writer, Kunihiko Hidaka. Hidaka would be relocating from Japan to Canada with his wife the very next day, and he decides to meet his friend before he is leaving. After meeting Nonoguchi, Hidaka is planning to complete a short story that he has promised to a magazine before he leaves for Canada. After that, he would leave his house and stay the night in the hotel where his wife is staying for the night.
After meeting Hidaka, Nonoguchi returns to his house. A few hours later, in the middle of a meeting with his publisher, he is interrupted by a phone call from his friend, who summons Nonoguchi to his house. Nonoguchi leaves immediately, and as he approaches Hidaka’s house, he finds it locked. Panicking, he calls Hidaka’s wife, Rie, at the hotel. She comes by and together they enter the house to see that Hidaka is dead. It’s the archetypal locked-door murder. Or at least that’s what Nonoguchi’s narration suggests. Indeed, this entire narrative was written down by him, and later found among his writings by the police.
Inspector Kyoichiro Kaga arrives at the scene to investigate the murder. Years ago, the detective, then a teacher, used to teach at a school where the suspect Nonoguchi was also a teacher. Kaga starts his investigation, and nothing seems as they initially appear. Were Nonoguchi and Hidaka really friends? Was Hidaka a cruel, devious man? Is there a criminal who is almost desperate to get caught? Why? In his determined, painstaking way, Kaga peels away the layers of the most ingenious and most satisfying of ‘whydunits’.
Kaga is a smart man, but that smartness never threatens the realms of genius or even spectacular brilliance. Kaga is, as Frederick Forsyth will put it, a ‘jagdhund’, the African hunting dog. The jagdhund is ungainly, neither super fast nor super strong, but once he catches the trail of his target, he will not let go. Kaga is not quirky, arrogant or pompous. In this first story of Inspector Kaga’s that I read, the protagonists steal the show with their ingenuity and their ruthlessness, and lead Kaga down the wrong path more than once – but Kaga doesn't let go. Doggedness and perseverance, great traits though they are for a real-life detective, do not often translate well to literature. Higashino, though, makes Kaga impressive. Kyoichiro Kaga is no Manabu Yukawa, and that is just fine by me. He is a superb addition to the canon.