I’m not sure a lot of people necessarily know this about me, but I am a huge fan of mystery stories. Ever since I was a small child watching Scooby-Doo, really. I loved Sherlock Holmes and The Famous Five; I used to enjoy watching Columbo and other mystery dramas on daytime TV. I like the Professor Layton series and games like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. And of course, I love anime like The Dinner Table Detective and Hyouka. They don’t have to be a crime drama; any kind of mystery is fine. But having said all that, I don’t talk about this a lot because there are not a lot of these stories, especially those that capture my heart and remain on my mind for a long time afterwards.
Maybe it’s because I spend most of my time embroiled in Japanese media, where it feels like English translations of these kinds of stories are in short supply (starting to read things in Japanese has opened a lot of doors there, to be fair!). And that’s one of the reasons when news broke on Monday of Keigo Higashino’s passing, I was devestated.