Dying Eye

Dying Eye is a full-length mystery novel by Keigo Higashino, originally titled ダイイング・アイ (Dying Eye). It was serialized in Kobunsha's Shōsetsu Gekkan for about a year starting in 1998, published as a hardcover in 2007, and released in paperback in 2011; because eight years passed between the serialization and the hardcover, readers dubbed it the "phantom work." The simplified Chinese edition was translated by Kuang Kuang and published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. The story begins with a late-night car accident: Minori Kishimoto is riding her bicycle home alone in the early hours when a red sedan strikes her on a gentle slope near her home, pinning her between a wall and the car, and she dies slowly in agony. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, bartender Shinsuke Amemura at a high-end bar is attacked by a stranger after work, suffers a severe head injury, and nearly dies; the attacker then commits suicide. After regaining consciousness and cooperating with the police, Shinsuke discovers he has lost an important memory—he was once one of the perpetrators of that fatal car accident. To understand why he forgot something so important, Shinsuke begins his own investigation. As it unfolds, his lost memories gradually return and the behavior of those around him turns strange; at the same time, a mysterious woman who appears only at night and never stays in one place enters the bar, and he falls for her at first sight—a development that pushes him into deeper trouble. The work blends supernatural elements into a mystery framework—the "dying eye" is both the final instant frozen in the victim's eyes and the embodiment of a vengeful obsession—exploring guilt, forgetting, and punishment: is forgetting one's own wrongdoing a blessing or another kind of sin? This edition is the 2010 paperback from Shanghai Translation Publishing House.