Keigo Higashino, who has not had a new work in the past ten years, is back. The suspenseful new work tells the secrets of his father’s generation for 33 years
Keigo Higashino, from the stern and sharp style of writing in “Maliciousness” and “White Night Walk”, to the perfect fusion of logic and sensibility in “The Devotion of Suspect X”, to the ingenious time and space nesting and healing of people’s hearts in “Jieyou Grocery Store” The power of… Gao Feng is in front, we can’t help but expect more from him.
Amazing creativity, or exhaustion—two voices have been surrounding Higashino for nearly a decade. For this writer who has been active in the front line for a long time since his debut, there is only one thing that matters most: how to break through himself.
In 2017, the 59-year-old Higashino decided to write a new novel. After finishing the draft, he said: “Beyond this work is my future goal.”
This is “The White Bird and the Bat”. On Amazon Japan, it is Higashino’s highest-rated independent novel following “Jieyou Grocery Store”, and some readers even hailed it as “Higano’s version of Crime and Punishment”.
Yes, 10 years following “Jieyou Grocery Store”, the familiar Keigo Higashino is finally back.
“Thirty-three years ago, that knife should have been in my heart. I killed someone, and three days later, the police caught another murderer. I wanted to protect my family, but I made others miserable. That threat The man who confessed everything must disappear. I had to take another innocent life. The lawyer Shiraishi was killed, and the police quickly identified the murderer. The evidence was complete, and the confession of the suspect Kuraki was flawless. The case was solved. The son of the victim and the daughter of the victim unexpectedly reached a consensus: Cang Mu was lying.”
As the 33-year-old secret of their father’s generation surfaced, what awaited them was a “truth” that was crueler than the truth.
Love, hate and mystery in “The White Bird and the Bat” began in 1984. At that time, Kuraki, a technician at the Anjo factory in Aichi Prefecture, had just become a father, and everything was getting better. He did not expect that the small accident with no casualties would become the beginning of a nightmare for the rest of his life. A mistake of good intentions caused everyone’s life trajectory to be completely out of control.
In reality, in 1984, Keigo Higashino was just an ordinary office worker, working as an engineer at a car company in Aichi Prefecture, desperately squeezing out his spare time to create. This year, on the recommendation of a friend, he submitted an essay to the “Edogawa Ranpo Award”, an authoritative award in the Japanese reasoning field. His work “Magic Ball” was shortlisted in one fell swoop, and since then he has strengthened his confidence to continue writing. The following year, “After School” won the first prize, and newcomer Keigo Higashino became famous. Another year passed, and he quit his job and moved his family to Tokyo to become a full-time writer.
Counting from the year when I decided to hand over all day and night to the pen in my hand when I was young, to the official publication of “The White Bird and the Bat”, it has been a full 35 years. After reading this “White Birds and Bats”, you will understand that everything Keigo Higashino has loved since he was young is still there.
