"Listening to the Heart" is a short detective story by Keigo Higashino centered on the physicist Manabu Yukawa and the detective Junpei Kusanagi, the protagonists of the "Detective Galileo" series. It has been collected under titles such as "Kokoro de Kiku" in the short-story collection The Crooked Mask (also translated as The Clown of False Images), and it is a representative work of the series in which a "supernatural phenomenon" is reduced to a scientific principle. In the story, Kusanagi is stabbed while subduing a man who suddenly loses control in a hospital; the man later claims he had been hearing strange sounds all along. The investigation reveals that a female employee at his company has also been suffering from similar auditory hallucinations, and that the company's sales director had just fallen to his death, having been involved in an affair with a woman and burdened by guilt over her suicide. The interlocking "sounds" and a string of anomalies shroud the case in an atmosphere of curses and the paranormal. After Yukawa steps in, he approaches the matter from physics and physiology, tracing unobtrusive real-world factors such as sound waves and electromagnetism, and finally exposes the truth of human manipulation behind the so-called "auditory hallucinations." The story is short and briskly paced, combining the rigor of a classic puzzle with a subtle portrayal of workplace pressure, guilt, and the way people's minds are exploited. This entry refers to a single work; readers who want the complete text should consult the collection in which it appears.
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Keigo Higashino was a Japanese mystery novelist, born on February 4, 1958, in Ikuno Ward, Osaka, and a graduate of Osaka Prefecture University. He made his debut in 1985 with After School, which won the Edogawa Rampo Prize. He went on to write prolifically, spanning honkaku mystery, socially engaged suspense, and warm-hearted narrative, with representative works including Journey Under the Midnight Sun, The Devotion of Suspect X, and Miracles of the Namiya General Store. In 2006 he received the Naoki Prize. His novels often wrap intricate deduction around human conflict, featuring frequent plot twists and unexpected endings, and have had a wide influence on Chinese-language readers. This site carries 24 of his works, mostly catalogued under foreign literature, classic works, and mystery and suspense. He died on July 23, 2026.
