假面飯店

This book was something of a departure from the usual Higashino stories that I'm used to (such as his Galileo and Kaga series), but that may be because it's a newer series compared to the others. In some ways, it felt a bit draggier and longer than the others because Higashino is suddenly taking a lot more time to develop other aspects of the story besides the msytery, but in others, there's some charm in getting to know our protagonists much better and seeing them develop, both individually and their dynamics with each other.

The overarching mystery in Masquerade Hotel involves a serial killer, who has already committed three murders, somehow revealing to the police that the next one would be done in the high-end Hotel Cortesia Tokyo. The police dispatches several of their finest to disguise themselves as hotel staff to keep an eye on things, one of whom is Kosuke Niita, hard-hitting cop who's not a little disgruntled at being assigned to blend into the front desk staff where he would have to be the epitome of hospitality and politeness in order to live up to Hotel Cortesia's reputation. The hotel staff in charge of training him up as a front desk personnel is veteran Yamagishi Naomi, whose entire identity is in being the perfect, role model hotel staff and giving guests only the best memories of staying in their hotel.

The actual mystery isn't that complicated and if it had been the only thing the book concentrated one (which is usually what Higashino does), it would probably take only half the length. But Higashino chose instead to focus a lot on developing Niita and Naomi's relationship dynamic. It sometimes felt like one of those Japanese dramas where each episode has a self-contained story about a problem with an odd guest and how everything gets resolved beautifully with rainbows in the end, with a nice message about how hotels are amazing.

The pacing of the book could be improved upon tbh, I think a lot of the smaller story arcs (which sole purpose was just for character or premise development rather than contributing anything to the mystery) could be tighter. I didn't really mind the episodic stories, but they could've taken a lot less time, and we could also probably see less of the policemen arguing amongst themselves or trying to stamp down on Niita's suggestions. But nevertheless, when you get into it, you do find yourself a bit sucked in.

Overall, I enjoyed myself and I found myself wanting to see more of Niita and Naomi by the end, even though it took me nearly half the book to really warm up to them. I would probably read the next one but it'll have to be a while from now because of how long it seems to take. I'm used to Higashino books being really snappy reads, so the fact that this seemed to go on forever was really weird.