The Night Before the Masquerade

The Night Before the Masquerade is the second installment of Keigo Higashino's Masquerade series and a prequel to Masquerade Hotel, consisting of four novellas and one bonus story. The story takes place before detective Kosuke Nitta and hotel front-desk clerk Naomi Yamagishi formally meet: Naomi has been transferred to the Cortesia Osaka, where she is a relatively inexperienced yet almost stubbornly diligent hotelier who detects lies in the details of guests' words and behavior; meanwhile, in Tokyo, Kosuke Nitta investigates a murder case and zeroes in on a man who insists he was in Osaka on the night of the crime but refuses to name the hotel where he stayed—what secret is he protecting even when suspected of murder? The protagonists of the four stories are a colorful assortment: a former boyfriend who disappeared years ago, a cooking-class instructor, a writer of mysterious whereabouts, an obsessive fan, and a dull-spoken university professor. They pass through the hotel each wearing a mask, beneath which lie either unspoken troubles or hidden motives. The hotelier's duty is to protect guests' privacy and their masks; the detective's duty is to strip away disguises and uncover the truth. These two diametrically opposed convictions intersect on the same stage. The two have never met, yet through clues in the cases they echo each other across the distance, completing an extraordinary relay of deduction. The book does not rely on gore or thrills for its effect but turns its lens on the everyday space between the hotel lobby and the guest rooms: an unreasonable request, a superfluous glance, a deliberate self-introduction—any of these may become a piece of the puzzle. Through the image of the mask, Keigo Higashino portrays how people constantly perform and conceal themselves between professional identity, intimate relationships, and social expectations. (Synopsis based on publicly available publication materials.)