I gave myself one week to finish “Malice”, you know, before the protected school holidays.

Instead, I finished it off today.

Devouring it every second I got in the lull moments during Prize-Giving Day. Avoiding small talk with my colleagues to focus intently on my reading.

I’m familiar with the TV Detective Galileo series, but this is the first Keigo Higashino book I have read. Consider me blown away when Chapter 3 revealed the murderer. I took a double turn and flipped to the first page of Chapter 3 to confirm my reading. No, I wasn’t imagining things.

Yes, just like Detective Kaga, I was dying to find out why Nonoguchi had killed his friend, Hidaka. What motive?

The way Higashino unravelled his narrative about Nonoguchi having an affair with Hidaka’s late wife, Hatsumi had me spellbound. What an intricate plot he had woven for us readers!

Little did I know that Higashino had other tricks up his sleeve. Kaga felt it in his bones that there was something odd about Nonoguchi’s confession. So, he went to dig deeper and interview anyone and everyone who had a connection with Nonoguchi and Hidaka.

It turned out that Nonoguchi never had an affair with Hatsumi. Nonoguchi had spun a fake motive. Why on earth would he do that?!

As I sped up my reading to get to the bottom of things, I was treated to a deliciously elaborate scrutiny of Kaga’s past. Before becoming a police detective, he failed to nip a serious case of bullying in the bud as a teacher. He considered it as the greatest failure of his life. I resonated quite keenly with his sense of helplessness.

Not only did I realise how crafty and cunning Nonoguchi was, I also immersed myself in the emotional scars of Kaga. Juicy!

The only thing I hope for is for Nonoguchi to express his thoughts after being found out by Kaga in the last chapter. I’m not sure Kaga’s first-person testimony satisfied much of my burning curiosity. But overall, definitely the most compelling and intelligent book I have read this year.