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A tour de force crime novel from one of the international masters of the form, where a simple murder case questions the simple notions of good and evil, guilt and redemption.
Homicide Detective Godai of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is assigned to investigate the death of a lawyer, Kensuke Shiraishi, whose body was found on a Central Tokyo riverbank. His investigations leads him to one Tatsuro Kuraki, who claims to have had limited contact with Shiraishi - but, surprising the investigators, Kuraki not only confesses to the lawyer's murder, but another one from thirty years ago - for which another man was arrested and died in custody before trial. This brings unexpected resolution to two cases but there is one problem: to Detective Godai the confession rings false.
And Godai is not the only one who cannot accept Kuraki's explanation of both murders and his professed motives. The confessed murderer's son and the victim's daughter both feel strongly that both the act and the motive claimed are untrue.
As Godai investigates further, he discovers that the relation between the murder of thirty years ago and the recent one is complex, raising multi-faceted questions of guilt and innocence. Swan and Bat is a rich novel about crime and its aftereffects on those left behind by both the victim and perpetrator, a twisting, compelling work that will surprise and astonish.
"A piercing and pitiless examination of guilt in all its forms and manifestations." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about Guilt was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Keigo Higashino is a bestselling author in Japan with over three dozen bestsellers, hundreds of millions of copies of his books sold worldwide, and nearly twenty films and television series based on his work. He won the Naoki Prize for his first novel featuring Detective Galileo. He lives in Tokyo.
Alexander O. Smith has translated a wide variety of novels, manga, and video games, for which he has been nominated for the Eisner Award, and won the ALA's Batchelder Award. He studied at Dartmouth College and holds an M.A. in Classical Japanese from Harvard University. He lives in Vermont.
Link to Keigo Higashino's Website
Name Pronunciation
Keigo Higashino: ke-ee-go hee-ga-shee-no
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