Chapter 1, Room 4, Ward 1
Chapter 2: The Haunted Hospital Room
Chapter 3: Suicide and Companion Suicide
Chapter 4 Gathering Data
Chapter 5: Inspector Ishige's Anxiety
Chapter 6: The Screaming Hinge
Chapter 7: The Missing Oil Can
Chapter 8 Fingerprints
Chapter 9 Graffiti
Chapter 10: Syringe Needles
Chapter 11: The Water Sound Problem
Chapter 12: Childish Threats
Chapter 13 The Sound of a Door Closing
Chapter 14: Investigation on Foot
Chapter 15: Ishige, Further North
Chapter 16 Four Women
Chapter 17 The First Woman
Chapter 18: Subtracting Three from Four
Chapter 19 The Living Corpse
Chapter 20: The Guillotine

Author's Note
Commentary | A full-length mystery filled with suspense and tricks

The moment the mystery stops, the shadow of death also approaches!

If you want to survive, you have to see through the loopholes in the tricks.
Find the last clue left by the dead!

Tsunoda, a novelist hospitalized in Room 4 of Shoji Hospital, has been seeing ghosts in his room in the middle of the night for some time now.
Room 4 is where a young secretary who embezzled 80 million yen in the past and attempted suicide with his lover was brought in and ultimately died.
From the moment Tsunoda is admitted to this ominous room 4, the nurses at the hospital show a subtle reaction.
Unable to bear it any longer, he inquires about the ward and learns that a previous patient in Room 4 also witnessed a ghost and ended his life by suicide.
Eventually, driven by fear and curiosity, he asks his old friend, Inspector Ishige, for help in uncovering the secret hidden in the hospital room.

So the two begin to uncover the mystery of Room 4 and the whereabouts of the missing 80 million yen.
As a writer with a disability in his legs, Tsunoda uses his imagination and reasoning skills to continue his bedside deductions, while Inspector Ishige, who is good at field investigations on foot, travels around the country to gather clues.
But as they get closer to the heart of the matter, numerous threats point their swords at their necks.
Even the police superiors pressure Ishige to stay out of the case, and Tsunoda is attacked by an unknown person while he is sleeping late at night, leaving the two of them in a situation where they could be killed at any time by anyone.
Two people chasing a ghost and a black hand chasing them.
Will these two be able to uncover the truth behind what happened in Room 4 and survive the cycle of death?

“An unconventional, authentic detective writer recognized by Edogawa Ranpo,
“The fast-paced sentences will keep you on the edge of your seat until you close the book.”
_Japanese literature translator Kim Eun-mo

Kusuda Kyosuke's hidden masterpiece, "When Will I Be Murdered?", was first published in 1957 and republished 60 years later in 2017 by Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing in Japan. It is the first of his works to be translated and published in Korea.
Although it is a work that was published nearly 70 years ago, if you read it without knowing this fact, you would think it is just a retro novel set in the 20th century, so it is not awkward at all.
The difference between this novel and the new novels that have been published recently is that it is sincere in its focus on the 'trick' that is the foundation of mystery novels.
This means that it is not a work that simply shows off its genre, but a novel for the purpose of mystery itself.
Edogawa Ranpo, who is still recognized as one of the greatest masters of Japanese fiction even 100 years after his debut in 1923, acknowledged Kusuda Kyosuke as an outstanding mystery novelist of his time and a master of tricks, leaving these words.


“When I announced the ‘Trick Collection by Type’, the person who showed the deepest interest among my colleagues was Mr. Kusuda.
He boasted that after carefully examining the classification table by type, he had come up with several tricks of his own.
That wasn't an empty boast.
After that, Mr. Kusuda actually published several works that utilized tricks that were not in the table I created.” _From the Author’s Note

And that's not all.
Arisugawa Arisugawa, who is called the 'Ellery Queen of Japan' and has become a living legend as a first-generation mystery writer, also recommended and praised 'When Will I Be Murdered'.
This may be because this novel breaks away from the flat format of a mystery novel consisting only of tricks and reasoning.

“A relentless pursuit of truth intertwined with elaborate tricks
“A masterpiece of a full-fledged mystery novel!”

Highly recommended by Arisugawa Arisu, a living legend in the Japanese mystery novel world!

A small space about three to four meters in size.
The incident begins in Room 4, which, unlike other wards, has bars on the windows and a lock on the door.
Like an armchair detective who solves cases through witness interviews and clues rather than on-site investigation, Tsunoda, lying in his hospital bed, discovers inconsistencies in past events that no one else has discovered.
But when another body is found at the hospital, the case begins to spiral out of control.
A bankbook containing a large sum of money was found with the body, a concentrated cyanide solution that could kill a hundred horses at once, and a large amount of drugs.
Just when the limitations of the armchair detective's investigation are felt, the novel's stage expands to a wider place.


After the first half of the story, where two people fight, Inspector Ishige shows the true value of 'investigation through running.'
They travel all over Japan to investigate, and as the case grows, the scale of the investigation grows, even leading to cooperation with the Metropolitan Police Department.
Running without rest to chase the criminal, but at the same time having to hide from the criminal's pursuit.
Inspector Ishige jumps from a moving train to avoid the criminal's pursuit and even boards a cargo ship loaded with coal.
In this way, the novel transforms from a sharp detective novel into a breathtaking investigative action film.
The appearance of a new character that no one expected, the sound of gunshots, and the identity of shocking evidence.
The story changes colors and expands endlessly, defying your expectations.


As we follow the elaborate tricks and tenacious pursuit that Kyosuke Kusuda has built up, we quickly reach the ending.
After you've read the book to the last page and closed the book, there's only one truth left.
Just as Edogawa Ranpo and Arisugawa Arisu did, you too will come to recognize and praise Kusuda Kyosuke as a master of tricks and a fundamental mystery novelist.