Malice is a mystery novel written by famous Japanese author Keigo Higashino and published in 2014. It is part of a series of books by Higashino starring the detective Kyoichiro Kaga.
The novel begins with a written account by Osamu Nonoguchi (which actually exists in-universe), a writer of children's books, as he recounts the day he visited his best friend and famous author, Kunihiko Hidaka, who is about to move to Vancouver the following day. Sometime after Osamu leaves, he receives a phone call from Hidaka asking him to come back to his house because he has something important to ask him. When Osamu arrives, he and Hidaka's wife Rie find Hidaka dead inside his office.
As it turns out, Kyoichiro Kaga is assigned to the case, and he and Nonoguchi are acquainted since both taught at the same school.
The novel begins with Nonoguchi as the viewpoint character, but during the next chapter when the viewpoint switches to Kaga, it becomes apparent that Nonoguchi's account may not be entirely honest...
Unmarked spoilers below.
This work contains examples of the following:
- Asshole Victim: Hidaka, the murder victim in the novel, is portrayed as an incredibly unpleasant and nasty person. He kills a neighbor's cat by feeding them poisoned food, and shamelessly uses and blackmails his friend who trusted him, plagiarizing his work for his own profit, and his wife committed suicide due to his horrible treatment of her and Nonoguchi. In the end, it's revealed that none of this happened and that the real Hidaka was most likely a nice and decent person. All of the horrible things he did are lies by Nonoguchi to tarnish his reputation.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Invoked. Hidaka's Establishing Character Moment is poisoning a cat who was messing up his backyard. It turns out Nonoguchi (who is a writer and aware of this trope) poisoned the cat himself and pinned it on Hidaka in the account he wrote, in order to paint him as a terrible person and color people's impression of Hidaka. It's so effective that it takes a very long time for Kaga to realize Nonoguchi's trick.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Nonoguchi himself is a rather nasty example of this trope. The first two-thirds or so of the novel paint him as, at worst, a victim of unfortunate circumstances who was driven to extreme actions to take revenge on someone who seriously wronged him. But what Kaga eventually uncovers not only exposes this as a lie, but instead paints him as an incredibly spiteful, hateful person who heavily resented Hidaka due to jealousy, and was willing to not only murder him, but create an elaborate scheme that would depict him as a tragic victim and Hidaka as a plagiarist, bully and liar. It doesn't help that Hidaka uncovered a picture of him assisting in the rape of a teenage girl as well, which when combined with his cancer diagnosis, pushed him over the edge to act out his scheme.
- Detective Drama: An example of a whydunnit. It's established fairly early on that Nonoguchi is almost certainly the murderer, and the plot from then on is figuring out what his motive is.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Nonoguchi claims that Hidaka plagiarized his work and then blackmailed him with proof of Nonoguchi's attempted murder against him(a video tape and a knife) to keep him quiet. Like almost everything Nonoguchi says, this is a lie. Hidaka never plagiarized his work and was genuinely a good author on his own merits, something which Nonoguchi was very resentful of.
- Red Herring: Hidaka's first wife died in a car accident. It's rather strongly suggested that this was in reality a suicide, due to her affair with Nonoguchi being discovered and both of them being abused by Hidaka, filling her with guilt. In the end, this affair probably never happened, and her death most likely just an accident. It's just another one of Nonoguchi's lies.
- Sympathetic Murderer: When Nonoguchi is proven to be the murderer beyond reasonable doubt, he eventually confesses and tells the police his motive: Hidaka plagiarized his work while blackmailing him with proof of attempted murder in order to keep him quiet, and his abuse of him and his first wife (who Nonoguchi loved and was having an affair with) drove the latter to suicide. He was just a victim who was used and abused by someone he considered a friend and heavily respected, and ended up losing someone he loved in the process. This is subverted when Kaga investigates the matter further and finds out that all of this is false. Nonoguchi's real reason for murdering Hidaka was that he had a photo of an incident where Nonoguchi was forced to assist in the rape of a teenage girl by a bully named Fujio. More than that however, he just hated and resented Hidaka for being more successful than him, despite Hidaka ostensibly being a good friend to him and helping him land his job as a writer. So much so that he created an elaborate scheme to take credit for Hidaka's work and painting him as a villain. Since Nonoguchi was dying of cancer anyway, he felt he had nothing to lose.
- Switching P.O.V.: The story alternates between Nonoguchi and Kaga's viewpoints, except for a part near the end which has a series of interviews which are written from the viewpoint of people Kaga is interviewing.
- The Bully: Masaka Fujio, who bullied Nonoguchi and Hidaka when they were teenagers. He's one of the reasons why Nonoguchi murdered Hidaka, since Fujio forced him to help rape a teenage girl and Hidaka was able to eventually find a photo of this event.
- The Dog Bites Back: After enduring the humiliation of being blackmailed and having his work plagiarized by Hidaka, as well as having the person he loved killed (in what is suggested to be the result of Hidaka's actions), Nonoguchi snapped and decided to kill him. Except that's not what happened; Hidaka in all likelihood was a good friend to him, but he killed him anyway out of malice and resentment.
- Unreliable Narrator: And how. It doesn't take long for the novel to show that Nonoguchi is not particularly trustworthy and that his initial account was created to manipulate the police into believing he was innocent. When this lie is exposed, Nonoguchi writes a confession detailing his motive for murdering Hidaka, which includes an affair with his wife and Hidaka plagiarizing his work and blackmailing him. This seems to tie up all the loose ends nicely, but Kaga isn't satisfied. Through more investigation, he finds out the truth: Nonoguchi fully intended to get caught and his confession was another attempt at manipulation, that being the creation of a perfect motive which would paint him in the best possible light and Hidaka as a massive asshole and a fraud. Nonoguchi's real reason for committing the murder is far more sinister. In retrospect, almost nothing Nonoguchi said throughout the novel was true at all, and his accounts basically tell you nothing about what he's actually like or his real motivations. Kaga's descriptions of his actions paint a picture of a far more heinous and malicious person than first assumed.
