The Detective Club

The Detective Club is a collection of orthodox mystery short stories by Keigo Higashino, published in simplified Chinese by Nanhai Publishing Company, translated by Li Yingchun. It contains five stories: "Night of Disguise," "In the Trap," "The Client's Daughter," "How to Use a Detective" and "The Rose and the Knife." The five stories share one setting: in Tokyo there is a private investigation agency known only in wealthy circles, run on a strict membership basis, called the "Detective Club." It serves only clients of extraordinary wealth and charges steeply, but it can find out for a client the character of an heir, the loyalty of those around them, and the truth behind suicides, murders, sudden deaths and other deaths with no clear cause, while keeping professional secrets absolutely. Whenever a murder occurs, a tall, striking man and woman dressed in black appear quietly like shadows; they have no names, leave no traces, and use only calm logic to uncover layer after layer of disguise. The cases here mostly unfold in closed mansions, meeting rooms, bathrooms and bedrooms, revolving around inheritance, extramarital affairs, questions of identity and family feuds. Higashino lays out the puzzle with the pace peculiar to short fiction, then brings the truth to light with unexpected reversals. A product of his early period, when he leaned toward orthodox puzzle-solving, the book is also seen as a transitional marker toward the social concern he later blended into his work. The book runs about 217 pages, and a Japanese TV drama adaptation of the same name starred Shosuke Tanihara and Nao Matsushita.