Each time you’re convinced Higashino’s wrung every possible twist out of his golden-age setup, he comes up with a new one....
The creator of Detective Galileo (Salvation of a Saint, 2012, etc.) returns with another fiendishly clever Chinese—make that Japanese—box of a whydunit.
Kunihiko Hidaka and Osamu Nonoguchi were childhood friends. Hidaka became a best-selling novelist, Nonoguchi a middle-school teacher who retired to write children’s books. Returning to Hidaka’s home a few hours after he last saw him, Nonoguchi, accompanied by Rie, Hidaka’s much younger second wife, finds his body, felled by a paperweight and strangled. Despite the alibi Nonoguchi offers Kyoichiro Kaga and the detailed written account of his movements during the fatal evening, the police detective, who once taught at Nonoguchi’s school, can’t help suspecting his former colleague of “creat[ing] a fictional account of the events in order to divert suspicion from himself.” That’s an ingenious idea, but Higashino is only getting started. As Nonoguchi and Kaga continue to spar with each other, the detective digs deeper into the past, uncovering startling revelations about the death of Hidaka’s first wife, the two men’s school days, and their literary careers, before coming up with a solution, and then another, and still another.
Each time you’re convinced Higashino’s wrung every possible twist out of his golden-age setup, he comes up with a new one. If you still miss the days of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, you can’t do better than this fleet, inventive retro puzzler.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03560-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
