Murder in a City Without a Name

Keigo Higashino is the best-selling author of detective novels in Japan. At home, he is called "a machine for producing bestsellers".
He is the winner of two of the country's most prestigious thriller awards – the Edogawa Rampo Prize and the... "Japanese Detective Literature" award, as well as the Naoki Prize (the Japanese equivalent of the Booker), the Honkaku Prize, and many others.
More than 50 films and series have been made based on Higashino's works.

The absence of traces is the most distinct trace.

School teacher Eiichi Kamio is found murdered in the backyard of his own home under a pile of cardboard boxes. He is dressed in a suit, but he is not wearing shoes. The house is turned upside down, but nothing is missing. And here’s what is especially mysterious… The cause of death is compression of the vessels in the neck; he was strangled, but there are no traces of fingers, no rope, or anything like that at all. The police are at a dead end.
But not the younger brother of the deceased – the illusionist-mentalist Takeshi. Using his rarest abilities, he begins his own investigation. For Takeshi, playing with reality is an integral part of his daily life. He can read people by the slightest manifestations of emotions. He is capable of involving a person in a clever scenario against their will so that they notice nothing. In the interest of the case, he can even slightly adjust reality…