Keigo Higashino

Keigo Higashino (1958–2026) was born in Osaka and studied electrical engineering at Osaka Prefecture University. He worked as an engineer before his 1985 debut, After School, won the Edogawa Rampo Prize. Over the next four decades, he became one of Japan’s most widely read mystery writers.

His fiction often begins with an apparently manageable puzzle, then shifts attention from how a crime was committed to what its solution will cost. Scientific reasoning shapes the Detective Galileo books, while the Kyoichiro Kaga series, including Malice and Newcomer, places greater emphasis on motive, memory and the relationships surrounding a death. His plots are exacting, but their decisive turns frequently depend on character rather than technical ingenuity.

The Devotion of Suspect X won the Naoki Prize and the Honkaku Mystery Grand Prize, and its English translation was nominated for an Edgar Award. Higashino also received the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Secret. Many of his works were adapted for film and television, and his books reached readers well beyond Japan.

Start with The Devotion of Suspect X, translated by Alexander O. Smith. It reveals the killing early, then builds suspense around mathematician Ishigami’s meticulously designed cover-up and physicist Manabu Yukawa’s attempt to understand it. The novel is both a cleanly engineered battle of minds and a painful study of devotion carried beyond reason.