This is my second Detective Kaga book (I previously read Malice) and I think this is what’s going to turn me into a Higashino Keigo fangirl! I mean, I loved the Galileo series, but more for the TV adaptation than the books.

Newcomer is a murder mystery – a woman has been found dead in her apartment, with a series of small mysteries associated with the case. Unlike most conventional mysteries, the narration doesn’t follow the detective or the detective’s assistant. Instead, we’re treated a series of narrators, all of whom are somewhat related to the case – for example, the granddaughter of a senbei shop (where a suspect bought senbei), a watch-repair shop’s employees, etc. Each narrator’s arc is a small story on their own, but as you read on, you gradually start to see the pieces of the puzzle put together. For example, Detective Kaga visits one shop in one arc, and in the next arc, he shows up with something from the shop in the previous arc.

In a way, the murder mystery is almost shunted to the side and the people are the periphery are given centre stage. Detective Kaga wants to solve the murder, but he also wants to solve all the small mysteries for the good of the people involved. It’s really heartwarming and I loved it so much.

As you can imagine, the characters here were great. I don’t think I disliked any of them, and I really appreciated how almost everyone had layers to them. It would have been nice to get into Kaga’s head, but I liked reading about the restaurant apprentice, about the estranged son, the senbei family, etc so I can deal with not knowing what the great detective is thinking.

Although the side characters are the ones telling the story, the book does have a solution to the murder mystery. The final few characters in the book are related to the victim or are law enforcement, and they help to slowly bring the focus of the tale back onto the murder mystery case, so that when the solution is revealed, it feels very natural.

In a way, Newcomer is a bit like Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, but much more satisfying and with an actual resolution. I tend to prefer murder mysteries that are written in a more straightforward way, but Higashino has written a novel that shows that you can twist the form of the genre and still make it work.