Keigo Higashino is Japan's best-selling mystery author. At home, it is called a “bestseller production machine.” He is the recipient of two of the country's most prestigious suspense awards—the Edogawa Rampo Prize and the Japanese Crime Fiction Prize—as well as the Naoki Prize (Japan's equivalent of the Man Booker), the Honkaku Prize, and many others. More than 50 films and TV series have been made based on Higashino's works.

School teacher Eiichi Kamio is found murdered in the backyard of his own house under a rubble of cardboard boxes. He is dressed in a weekend suit, but has no shoes. Everything in the house is upside down, but nothing is missing. And here’s what’s especially mysterious... The cause of death is compression of blood vessels in the neck; he was strangled, but there are simply no traces of fingers, rope, or anything like that. The police are at a dead end. But not the younger brother of the deceased - the illusionist-mentalist Takeshi. Using his rare abilities, he begins his own investigation. For Takeshi, playing with reality is an integral part of his daily life. He knows how to read people by the slightest manifestations of emotion. He is able to involve a person in a cunning scenario against his will without him noticing anything. In the interests of the matter, he can even slightly correct reality...