Eight men and women gather at a remote mountain lodge when a bank robber breaks in in the middle of the night and takes them hostage.
The hostages attempt to escape several times but fail each time, and a suffocating tug-of-war ensues between the robbers and the hostages, with one of them found murdered.
Up to this point, it's a common theme and plot of a mystery novel, nothing particularly unusual.

But when Keigo Higashino writes, it's different.
“What a shock.
“My head hurt after reading it.” (by yop)
“The last of the shock.
After reading it all, I shouted, ‘I got it~~!’ (by peki 223)
"Shocked, fooled!" (Ray)
Reviews left on the Amazon Japan website by Japanese readers who first encountered the work were all unanimous in their descriptions of being "shocked," "astonished," and "deceived."

This is understandable, as readers who had been simply watching the novel unfold with excitement, as if it were a play on a well-planned stage, are shocked as if they had been hit in the head when they encounter an incredible twist at the climax of the work that no one could have even imagined.
As Japanese novelist Ichi Orihara once called Keigo Higashino “a writer with many different drawers,” he has published numerous works across a wide range of subjects and genres, from full-blown mysteries to psychological crime novels, suspense, and even science fiction, making it difficult to believe that these works are all by the same author.
And this time, he opens a very attractive drawer for the readers.


Tomomi, whose dream was to get married in a small church near her father's villa, died just a week before her dream was to come true when she was driving carelessly while returning from the church where the wedding was scheduled to take place, crashed into a guardrail, and fell off a cliff.
Some time later, her fiancé, Takayuki, receives an invitation from Tomomi's father to come and stay at the villa.
Takayuki, who had not lost touch with Tomomi's family even after her death, gladly accepted the invitation and decided to spend a few days at the villa with Tomomi's parents, older brother, and seven other relatives.
On the night Takayuki arrives at the villa, a duo of bank robbers, who are being chased by the police, break into the villa, take the eight people gathered there hostage, and stage a hostage crisis.
The hostages attempt to escape in various ways, but each time they fail. A bloody war of nerves ensues between the hostages and the robbers, and one of the hostages is found dead with a knife stabbed in his back.
Judging by the circumstances, the culprit is not the robber, but one of the hostages.

The remaining seven hostages panic and become suspicious of each other… … .

The story is clear and the development is not complicated.
However, as the tension and suspense between the invited guests and the two bank robbers gradually increase, a major twist unfolds at the climax.

When the reader's attention is focused on 'how will the hostages be freed from the bank robbers' clutches' or 'how will the bank robbers be caught', the writer smiles and waits for the reader to fall for a big trap.

This novelistic technique is called a 'narrative trick'. While the tricks in general mystery novels are tricks that the criminal uses to avoid being tracked by the police or detectives and to hide his identity, a narrative trick is a mystery writing technique in which the author intentionally misleads the reader into misunderstanding information by exploiting the reader's preconceptions or loopholes in common sense, so that the reader feels a great shock and reversal when he or she realizes the truth.
In other words, the author intentionally leaks misleading information or hides some information to deceive the reader, and the reader who fails to notice the author's trick and is eager to find out the culprit's lies or trick ends up feeling betrayed and empty, as if hit in the back of the head at the end.
And then you realize that all the settings and events that you thought were unnatural or flimsy were actually clever devices set by the author to drag the reader into a trap he had set until the very end.
Keigo Higashino, an excellent storyteller, engages readers in a thrilling battle of wits by occasionally dropping hints of tricks through the dialogue of characters in "The Masked Lodge Murder Case."
However, it does not easily free the reader from the trick and drags them along until the end.

Readers who have followed the author to the climax after a fierce battle of wits will feel both anger and relief at the author's malicious intent.