When Osamu Nonoguchi went to call on his friend, successful author Kunihiko Hidaka, he noticed a woman in Hidaka's garden; she said the writer had poisoned her cat, which startled Nonoguchi. Shortly after going back home, Nonoguchi receives a phone call from Hidaka who says he has something important to talk about and to come visit him at 8 o'clock that same evening. Hidaka says he will be writing alone at home; his wife is at a hotel as they will be leaving for Canada in a few days' time. But when Nonoguchi arrives at Hidaka's home, he finds the house dark; he's worried so he calls Hidaka's wife. She arrives within half an hour and they go inside together. That's when they find Hidaka dead; he was murdered. The detective on the case is Kyochiro Kaga, who was an old school mate of Nonoguchi's, and both were teachers at the same school for a while; is it a coincidence?

MALICE is a mostly a police procedural but with a twist: the chapters alternate between Detective Kaga's investigation and Nonoguchi's account of the events. I thought it might be confusing, but it definitely isn't; both points of view flow seamlessly into a very captivating murder mystery and it proves quite interesting to see things from both men's sides. MALICE is not precisely a whodunit, but rather finding why the murder happened, and getting there is enthralling. The main characters, Nonoguchi and Kaga, are fascinating, as are their interactions with each other.

A good part of MALICE delves into the past, and although I am not usually a fan of this literary trick, it works extraordinarily well here; never has reading why a murder was committed been so thrilling! We get the feel of Japan as if we were natives, and yet it's very comfortable. The story is tightly plotted, there are very clever plot twists, the writing is superb, and the translation is flawless. I enjoyed MALICE a lot and I'm very much looking forward to further adventures featuring Detective Kaga!