Keigo Higashino (東野圭吾) has died
Didn't expect to see this news today. Didn't even think he would pass away before 島田荘司, or Lawrence Block, or G. R. R. Martin, or Stephen King. I guess people just die.
I read quite a lot of Higashino's mysteries 20 some years ago. The first one of his I read was his debut work 放課後 (After School, 1985). Of course, I couldn't read the Japanese original back then, I read the pirated scans of the Chinese translation published in Taiwan in 1991. If I remembered correctly, it was also out of print in Taiwan already, and some exchange colleague student from mainland to Taiwan went so far to hunt it down in some library, scan it, proofread it, and then post it on some mainland university BBS. I printed the whole book and brought it back to the boarding school and read it more than a handful of times, and when I was on breaks and got access to the internet, I joined the discussions on that BBS about the construction of the locked room (is it truly a mechanical locked room or a psychological one or a mixed?), is the motive absurd or realistic? etc.
Higashino wrote some other amazing works, I like 白夜行 and 容疑者Xの献身 a lot, 加賀恭一郎シリーズ was also not bad. But out of all his work, I still like 放課後 the best.
A few years ago, when some friends visited Japan for summer school, I asked them to bring back a second-hand copy. It turned out to be a first print edition. I still haven't read it yet (even though now that I can indeed read Japanese). I guess I will start reading it now. And I guess I will never let it go.
