Random Things Tours: Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Riku Onda translated by Alison Watts

´At some point during this night, will I be able to get her to say with her own lips that she killed that man?´.

´Will he tell me the truth? And if he does, will he believe me whwn I say that I have no intention of reporting him?´

A young couple is spending their last night together before breaking up for good. They realized their story does not have any future recently, during a trip when their guide violently died. During their last night, each hopes to convince the other one to confess the crime of having killed the guide. But the hour of truth arrives when there is a truth to reveal.

I dare to compare Fish Swimning in Dappled Sunlight by Riku Onda translated from Japanese by Alison Watts  to a painting, whose details are revealing surprisingly under the brushes of the painter. The ways in which the strory is built are highly precise, starting from the details of the rooms to the details of the plot. The hints are hiting a crescendo after the other, as the reader is wisely guided into the final revelation of the story. 

It is a book of fine and elegant psychological suspense, raising questions and keeping the reader constantly connected to the story as curious and keen to reveal - or being revealed - the truth. The permanent switch between one point of view to another infuses a unique dynamism and suspense into the story. You feel like your head is constantly switching from the right to the left, until you just forgot which side you are and then...boom!...we have a solution.

Besides being an excellent suspense crime story, this book raises in parallel several fundamental questions and discussions, such death and relationships. Such an intellectual intermezzo may actually help to fix the details of the story, and gives depth and character to the protagonists of the story.

Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own