Keigo Higashino, one of Japan’s most widely acclaimed author of mystery novels, died on July 23 this year from colorectal cancer.
Born in Osaka in 1958, he started writing in high school but after university in 1981 began work as an engineer at Nippon Denso Co. He wrote novels and short stories on the weekends and submitted them to the annual Edogawa Rampo Prize two years later. In 1985, he won the prize for best unpublished mystery for “After School”. One year later, he quit his job and moved to Tokyo to become a full-time writer.
Until his death, he wrote 78 novels, 24 short story collections, and a number of other books and essays. He was a very popular author in China and his novels were translated into numerous languages. He also won a number of Japanese literature prizes, among them prestigious ones like the Edogawa Rampo Prize, the Naoki Prize, the Eiji Yoshikawa Prize, and the Kikuchi Kan Prize.
Higashino was my favourite author of mysteries, his twists that often come in the very last pages are legendary. By far, I haven’t read all of his novels, not even all that were translated into English. However, I think that his “Devotion of Suspect X” is his best book. Here’s a list of Higashino’s books I’ve read and reviewed (see the MY READING page for details), just in case you’d like to give him a try.
- Malice (1996, Inspector Kaga)
- Newcomer (2009, Inspector Kaga)
- A Death in Tokyo (2011, Inspector Kaga)
- The Devotion of Suspect X (2005, Detective Galileo)
- Salvation of a Saint (2008, Detective Galileo)
- A Midsummer’s Equation (2011, Detective Galileo)
- Journey Under the Midnight Sun (1999)
- The Name of the Game is A Kidnapping (2002)