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Der er ingen tegn på indbrud eller andet påfaldende, da Osamu Nonoguchi finder sin gode ven, bestsellerforfatteren Kunihiko Hidaka, myrdet i dennes eget hjem. Osamu skriver børnebøger, mens Kunihiko skriver voksenlitteratur. De har kendt hinanden siden barndommen. Kunihiko har
Lidt over fem går frøken Fujio efter at have talt med Kunihiko og klokken seks skulle han mødes med Osamu, men Osamu mødte et mørkt og lukket hus og ringede lidt urolig til Rie, der kom tre kvarter senere og lukkede op. Inde i Kunihikos arbejdsværelse lå han død på gulvet, så de tilkaldte politiet. Poltikommissær Sakoda og politiassistent Kaga bliver sat på sagen. Kaga og Osamu kender hinanden fra ca ti år siden, hvor de begge var lærere. Osamu har fornyligt kvittet lærerjobbet og skriver børnebøger. Han skriver sine observationer og oplevelser ned. Senere får Kaga dem at kigge igennem og han læser dem så grundigt at han bliver overbevist om at Osamu er morderen. Kunihiko blev slået ihjel med en brevpresser og stranguleret med telefonledningen. Kunihikos computer blev sat til at ringe Osamus telefon op, så det kunne fungere som alibi, men Kaga undrede sig over at computeren var tændt, når alt lys var slukket. Kunihiko havde også kun røget een cigaret siden mødet med Kunihiko og det passede dårligt med at han var kæderyger.
Kaga dukker op med en ransagningskendelse. Osamu går til bekendelse. Men han vil ikke ud med hvad motivet skulle være?
Kaga har et gæt og på Osamus tekstbehandlingssystem finder man forstadier til Kunihikos bøger og noveller, så Osamu ser ud til at have været ghostwriter for Kunihiko i lang, lang tid. Mens Osamu sidder fængslet, får han konstateret kræft. Kaga borer dybere og finder fotos af Kunihikos første kone sammen med Osamu. Han gætter at de havde en affære, som Kunihiko fandt ud af og brugte til at afpresse Osamu til at samarbejde. Faktisk havde Osamu planlagt at dræbe Kunihiko for syv år siden, men det opdagede Kunihiko og brugte mod Osamu og konen.
Kaga afdækker alt dette, men kan ikke få det til at passe med hans indtryk af Osamu, som han jo også har været kollega med engang. Han borer dybere og opdager at det hele er nøje planlagt af Osamu, sikkert fra han opdagede at kræften var vendt tilbage. Målet var ikke bare at dræbe Kunihiko, men at lave et karaktermord på ham og få det til at se ud som om hans bøger var skrevet af en anden. Måske bare fordi Kunihiko var et irriterende bedre menneske end Osamu og altid havde været det, selv i barndommen og skolen.
Superdygtigt konstrueret kinesisk æske fortælling sat i Japan på en tid hvor faxmaskiner, computere og tekstbehandlingssystemer alle kan indgå i plottet.
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Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found 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, 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. At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same public school. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi eventually left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. As Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers' relationship was very different that they claimed, that they were anything but best friends. But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the killer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded. And if Kaga isn't able to uncover and prove why the murder was committed, then the truth may never come out. Malice is one of the bestselling-the most acclaimed-novel in Keigo Higashino's series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga, one of the most popular creations of the bestselling novelist in Asia.… (more)
User reviews
The author makes clever use of narrative from the perspective of a friend of the deceased, the police officer investigating, and ultimately the murderer. Discussion of pervasive bullying at school and how it can continue
Recommended, especially if you are a fan of crime in translation.
Very well-written. I would love to read more from this author and hope that all his stories can be translated into English.
I just... what just happened?!
I'm still in a state of shock and my mind is all over the walls and ceiling because of the ultimate mind-blowingness that resulted in reading this book!
Extremely clever and thoroughly planned out to
Malice is a murder mystery novel but nothing like you would be expecting to step into. Instead of the usual who-dunnit, it's an extremely creative maze of twists and turns to find out the motive behind the murder. It has you going back to read pages because you must have missed a huge giveaway before that's how intelligent this book is.
It's a fairly simplistic writing style having been translated from Japanese but I believe that if it was any more complicated, the book would have been unbearably overwhelming. It has the perfect balance.
People have said to battle through the middle but I didn't really understand what there was to battle through because there was still so many unanswered questions that I just had to keep reading.
Seriously amazing and soul sucking book that is indeed dripping with malice.
Probably more of a 4.5 but because of the state of shock I'm in after just finishing it, I'm giving it a 5 star. Brilliant, genius and obsessive.
This mystery was very original and enjoyable, almost unputdownable. It is not particularly suspense-driven, but is instead a compelling psychological puzzle. Higashino crafts a very intricate plot full of perfect details and side stories that all fit together in the end. Additionally, the way he structures the novel, with alternating perspectives and various styles, keeps the novel very interesting and fresh.
Unfortunately, this is the only Detective Kaga novel that has been translated into English. I’ll definitely pick up the next installment as soon as it’s available.
Kaga (the detective) solves who did it and how, but what really drives him is the why. This desire to understand causes him to research not just the current relationship between the
Nonoguch (the suspect) presents his side at the very beginning. Convincing but yet not. He sets about giving statements, then sits and waits to see where they lead Kaga during his investigations. Both men knew and worked together years before and have a rememberance of what each was like.
The cat will catch the mouse but will the cat figure out why the mouse did what he did?
This is along the line of psychological thriller, not always my cup of tea, but I enjoyed this to the point of sitting up late hours to read until I couldn't read any more. Excellent and compelling.
Kunihiko Hidaka is a best-selling, award-winning novelist who, soon before he moves from Japan to Canada, is murdered in his home. His body is found in his office behind a door locked from the inside. The house, too, is locked. Only three people are known to have seen Hidaka before his death: Rie Hidaka, his second wife; Osamu Nonoguchi, his friend and fellow author; and Miyako Fujio, the sister of a man who was vilified in one of Hidaka's novels. All three have alibis and their motives, if they even exist, are unclear at best. Kyoichiro Kaga is one of the police detectives assigned to the investigation of Hidaka's murder. It just so happens that he knows Nonoguchi. The two men used to be teachers at the same middle school before Kaga left to join the police force and Nonoguchi left to write full-time. Kaga's intuition and his previous acquaintance with Nonoguchi correctly leads him to believe that something isn't quite right with the other man's story. Digging deeper he discovers that Nonoguchi and Hidaka's relationship was much more complicated than it first appeared.
Higashino takes a different approach in each work, but much like the two Detective Galileo novels in English--The Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint--who the murderer is in Malice becomes quite clear early on in the work. It doesn't take very long at all for Nonoguchi to confess. The real mystery is the reason behind Hidaka's murder and Nonoguchi's motives. The confession is really all that the police department needs to close the case, but human curiosity demands to know the reasons why. To some extent, Nonoguchi is counting on this; he needs Kaga to investigate. Nonoguchi leads and misleads the detectives in order to create the narrative that he wants the world to believe about Hidaka and his murder. Malice is extraordinarily clever. Nonoguchi's novelist mindset enables him to manipulate others in ways that are unexpected and yet completely reasonable. As an author he is quite skilled in creating fictions that people are willing to believe and knows how to play into their expectations.
As a whole, Malice is an extremely engaging mystery, but one of the most interesting and intriguing things about the novel is its structure. I've never come across something quite like it before. Some of the chapters are told by Nonoguchi, essentially forming a novel within a novel, while other chapters are devoted to Kaga's notes on his investigation as well as the interviews he conducts as a part of it. Nonoguchi is an inherently unreliable narrator, freely mixing select facts into the fiction of his written account. Kaga's task is to tease the truth out of Nonoguchi's writing. Kaga is working with the same material that is presented to the readers of Malice; it is fascinating to see his thought processes and theories develop in response to the information that Nonoguchi is deliberately providing him. I've come to expect smart and clever writing from Higashino and I was not at all disappointed with Malice. I hope to see even more of his work translated, and perhaps even more stories featuring Kyoichiro Kaga, in the future.
Experiments in Manga
4 stars
This was my "A book that takes place in Asia" entry for the Read Harder Challenge.
When you read it you really are transported to another world. Like a very long haiku!
The book is a "whydunit" and not a "whodunit." Detective Kaga identified the murderer early in the book and confessed. The next question was - as always - why did the murderer commit the crime?
Detective Kaga spent considerable energy unearthing the motive, which is complicated. This book is masterful.
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Omslaget viser en gangbro i japansk stil og to japanske skrifttegn
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra japansk "悪意" af Mette Holm, Anders Juel Michelsen
Side 40: Forældre nutildags ...
Side 62: Forholdet mellem lærer og elev er baseret på en illusion. Læreren ligger under for en illusion om at bibringe eleven noge, og eleven bilder sig ind, at han bliver bibragt noget. Det vigtige er, at denne indbildning gør begge parter glade. At erkende sandheden, fører ikke noget godt med sig. Vi leger bare skole.
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895.63 |