Malice

For a book about passions and someone's motivation for murder, the narrative operates at a distance from the emotions of its characters. Fairly early on, detective Kyoichiro Kaga divines from the clues (Sherlock Holmes style) who the murderer is. Much harder to suss out is the murderer's motive, and the reader is taken through several iterations of the question "but what is the real reason behind what they did?" 3.5 stars for an inventive form and drawing power to keep me interested in the layers being uncovered. But demerits for the emotion of the text not being in line with the emotion of the characters.