Keigo Higashino (1958–2026) was a Japanese novelist born in Osaka Prefecture. He began writing while working as an engineer and made his debut when “Hokago” won the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1985. “Byakuyako” begins with the murder of a pawnbroker in Osaka and follows the victim’s son and a suspect’s daughter over the next nineteen years. Although they appear to lead separate lives, traces of other crimes surface around them. In “Yogisha X no Kenshin,” a mathematics teacher tries to protect a woman who lives next door by misleading the police, while his former classmate, the physicist Manabu Yukawa, examines his plan. The novel won the Naoki Prize in 2006. “Namiya Zakkaten no Kiseki” follows three young men hiding in a closed shop who begin answering letters seeking advice—letters sent from decades in the past. As they respond, the lives of people from different times begin to intersect. The novel won the Chuo Koron Literary Prize in 2012.
