The Curse of the Great Detective

The Curse of the Great Detective is a full-length fantasy mystery novel by Keigo Higashino and the second installment in the Detective Tenkaichi series, a companion piece to The Rules of the Great Detective. The story begins with "I": a mystery writer walks into a library to gather material, loses his way among the shelves, follows a man in a plaid suit up a staircase that seems to come from nowhere, and meets a girl in white. The girl calls "me" "Detective Tenkaichi" and hands over a photograph of a man who looks exactly like "me." When he wakes, the world has changed: there is only one small town, where everyone knows everyone and the complex structures of the modern city are absent; stranger still, this world has no concept of "honkaku mystery" at all—people do not know what a locked room is, nor what a trick means. Staying in town under the identity of "Detective Tenkaichi," "I" is asked by the mayor to investigate an old matter: a mummy found in the basement of a memorial hall. Thereafter, classic honkaku-style puzzles strike the town in succession—a locked-room shooting, a novelist struck by an arrow next door while the culprit vanishes, four deaths in a row at a snowbound mountain villa—shattering the peace of this world. As he solves the mysteries, "I" gradually realizes that this city may be a fictional world forgotten or abandoned by its author. Written in a tone that blends self-mockery and confession, the book records Keigo Higashino's respect, confusion, and farewell toward honkaku mystery.