The Wavering Blade

Nagamine Shigeki and his only daughter, Emi, live together, just the two of them. One summer night, fifteen-year-old Emi goes out in a summer kimono to attend a fireworks festival and never comes home; her body is later found in a river. The case remains unsolved for a long time, until Nagamine receives an anonymous call telling him the names and addresses of the killers. Half-doubting, Nagamine slips into the apartment, where he finds several videotapes, one labeled "August Fireworks, Summer Kimono"; the tape shows his daughter being assaulted. In grief and rage, Nagamine kills one of the killers, Tomozaki Atsuya, who happens to return, and learns from him where the other killer, Sugano Kaoru, is hiding. He sends a letter to the police declaring that he will have his revenge no matter what and will turn himself in once it is done. Thus an ordinary company employee becomes a murder suspect wanted nationwide, while the two teenage killers hide under the protection of the law. With this case of mutual ruin at its axis, the book brings together the differing positions of the victim's family, the investigating detectives, the media, and bystanders: the police waver between duty and sympathy, public opinion splits between "punish juvenile offenders severely" and "give juveniles a chance to reform," and the families of other victimized girls are drawn in as well. Keigo Higashino offers no easy answers; instead he lays out questions one by one—whom does the law actually protect, and is fighting evil with evil still justice?—leaving readers to decide where the wavering blade should point.