The 134th Naoki Award

No. 1 among the top three mystery novels in 2006

The 6th Hong Kong Mystery Fiction Award

Protagonist, native of Osaka

Kirihara Yosuke was in the fifth grade of elementary school when he was killed

Good at electronics and paper-cutting, strong in analysis and planning, smart in mind, never make the same mistake again

The heroine, a native of Osaka, is the same age as Ryoji

Extraordinarily elegant and beautiful, with cat-like eyes

Changing surnames Karasawa, Takamiya and Shinozuka due to family changes

Learn the two ways of Camellia, behave in a cold and selfish manner, and leave no escape route

A detective from the Osaka Prefectural Police Investigation Section 1 pursued the murder of Yosuke and still persisted even after the criminal retrospective period had passed.

A detective from the Osaka Prefectural Police Investigation Section 1, who later became the niece-in-law of Sasagaki's wife (Katsuko Sasagaki)

After Sasagaki resigned from the police force, Koga used police force to hunt down Ryoji

Pawnshop proprietor, Kirihara Ryoji’s father

A pedophile who had been persecuting her childhood, Yukiho Nishimoto; was assassinated in an abandoned building

Kirihara Ryoji’s mother was originally a waiter

Kirihara Yosuke's subordinate, pawnshop clerk

He had an affair with Yayoi and was silenced by Kirihara Ryoji

The biological mother of Yukiho Nishimoto. Her husband died of illness early in life, and her family was very poor. She made a living by selling Xuesui's body.

The police claimed that the cause of his death was an accidental death caused by gas poisoning.

Xuesui’s math tutor is fascinated by the beautiful Xuexi

His company's game program was plagiarized. Yukiho secretly copied it to Ryoji.

Yuki Sui's main friend after junior high school, Yuki Sui's "green leaf", pure and cowardly, admires Yuki Sui

She fell in love with the wealthy Shinozuka Kazunari at first sight, which made Yukiho jealous. Erizo dated Kazunari for a while.

After college, he alienated Yukiho and Issei for some reason (being framed, being photographed naked), and later married an ordinary person on a blind date.

The president of the university dance club when Yukiho and Eriko joined, and pursued Eriko; the second generation of Shinozuka Pharmaceuticals

I have always believed that there is another temperament besides Xuesui's noble temperament, and doubted Xuesui's conduct and past.

He was the vice-president of the university dance club when Yukiho and Eriko joined it; after graduation, he was deceived by Yukiho Nishimoto and had no choice but to marry him, and joined Tozai Denso

After getting married, Takamiya Makoto found out that he still didn't love Yukiho, and was set up by Yukiho to meet Sentori Misawa, whom he originally liked. Only then did he realize that his marriage was a mistake, and he divorced with guilt.

It was not until the end that the mystery of the case was gradually revealed. Ryoji committed suicide by jumping off the building for Yukisui, but Yukisui was very cold and never looked back. This was also part of Ryoji's plan. These two people, whose hands are stained with sin, are a pair of suffering souls who rely on each other. Their greatest wish is to walk hand in hand in the sun, but this is a luxury they can never achieve.

The strong fighting spirit and unremitting efforts of the two protagonists who are always upward are actually completed in the continuous downward fall. In order to realize his dream, he has committed sins and is already beyond redemption. Through the eyes of the characters in the novel, it reveals a metaphor for Japanese society and also reflects the spiritual emptiness of many married women from middle-class Japanese families at that time.

It reminds readers to think: If you blindly pursue high-speed development to the point of losing your mind, tragedy will definitely happen.

The author hid this love for a long time, and it is this long narrative time that makes this love seem sad and heavy. Secondly, the author selects the narrator of the story from various angles, spreads out around the protagonist's life, and stands in every corner to outline this love. Third, the author arranges the narrators in the nineteen-year narrative time, and the integration of the two forms the calm and cruel narrative structure of the work.

At the end of the novel, Ryoji jumps down the stairs of Yukiho's gorgeous new store. Yukiho replies expressionlessly that the police don't know this person, and turns around to go up the stairs without looking back. Ryoji has been paying for Xuesui's happiness, even giving his life. It's not that Xuesui doesn't love Ryoji, but she loves him too much. Ryoji's death has taken away her soul. For the sake of the dead Ryoji, she must not reveal the pain and pain in her heart. Sad, from now on she can only walk alone in the darkness

The work is a long-form masterpiece created through the perspectives of many characters and using multiple hidden lines. With a time span of nineteen years, the story begins when the pawnshop owner was killed in an unfinished building, and basically moves forward along with the development of the times.

Although the author adopts a temporal narrative sequence of the story from front to back, this order is artificially interrupted by the author's use of chapter division. Thirteen time fragments are intercepted to tell the development of the story. In these fragments, the two characters As time goes by, the protagonist's image becomes clearer and clearer as the perspectives of different people change, and the story gradually reaches its climax.

In the novel, the hero and heroine are always in a state of "being watched". All cases are described from the perspective of other participants or bystanders. Almost all understanding of the hero and heroine is obtained from the stories of each relevant person. This kind of writing not only requires climactic story weaving skills, but also requires the author to have a precise grasp of the living conditions and psychological states of different types of characters.

At the beginning of the work, the foreshadowing of "abnormality in the corpse's belt" is set up, which echoes the "stained Yukiho due to pedophilia" at the end of the novel. One at the beginning and one at the end. There is a 20-year gap between appearance and reality, but the gap in time and space can make readers feel as if "a word awakens a dreamer"

Many people were killed in the novel without mentioning the direct murderer. The only ones who can be confirmed to be killed by Ryoji are Matsuura, Imae and his father Yosuke. In terms of motivation, there is actually only one motive, self-protection (mainly to protect Yukiho). Because they were close to the truth or the truth would be revealed, they were all silenced.

From a fundamental analysis, the world of this novel is actually a binary structure, with sin and love on one side; black and white on one side; good and evil on one side; manifest and hidden on one side. Keigo Higashino always uses irony to invert the above-mentioned binary structure. The seemingly pure and beautiful Yukiho is sinful. The dark shadow of her childhood cannot be removed, so there is no sun in her life. Ryoji Kirihara is mysterious and dark on the surface, but he endured the consequences of his father's crime and did everything for Xuesui. He replaced the sun and became Xuesui's light, so that she could walk in the white night.

In detective stories, the detective character is generally the embodiment of justice, the judge of the world, and the seeker of the truth. However, in this work, during the development of the plot, the detective's character gradually loses its color, showing that the power of justice is limited and even powerless. In contrast, the power of evil is strong. The stronger the power of evil in the work, the greater the power of atonement and love. This ironic approach makes readers feel unexpected and thought-provoking. It wasn't until the end of the novel that the detective showed up to reveal everything, leaving innocence in the world.