About the book: 2024 / WORLD BESTSELLER. A CULT SERIES BOOSTED AFTER THE NOVEL. The author is a recognized master of the yamisu style, exploring the dark sides of the human soul. This is one of the main trends in modern Japanese detective fiction. Five schoolgirls were playing volleyball next to the school swimming pool. A man approached them and asked them to help check the ventilation in the locker room. He chose one of the girls and took her away, and the rest just continued playing. Realizing that their friend had been gone for too long, they followed her. And with horror they saw her dead body... No matter how many girls were interrogated, they could not remember the face of the killer. Then the mother of the deceased gathered them together and accused them of her daughter’s death. She said: “I will not forgive you until you find the killer. If you can't do this, find another way to atone, which I will accept. If you do neither one nor the other, I tell you here and now: I will take revenge on you, each of you.” And the girls’ lives turned into a nightmare for many years... This novel hits the heart, forcing you to think seriously about responsibility for actions, that we have done - or, conversely, not done, which turned out to be even worse... ________________________________________________________________ "This is Japan's Gillian Flynn ..." - Los Angeles Times "An intense psychological drama... filled with strange interweavings of the random and the natural, free will and manipulation, the mundane and the bizarre" . – Wall Street Journal “Minato exposes the wounds hidden beneath the flawless skin of Japanese society.” – Publishers Weekly “Just when you think you know where this is going, Kanae Minato lifts another curtain, revealing yet another face to the mystery.” – Jenny Milchman “Don’t be fooled by the hypnotic beauty of Kanae Minato’s prose. As the novel's characters reveal their secrets, the dark heart of the story is exposed. A flawless, gripping read." – Hilary Davidson “Kanae Minato is a brilliant storyteller.” – Emily St. John Mandel