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Laplace's Witch Review: A Scientific Murder Mystery

 


Title: Laplace's Witch by Keigo Higashino

Genre: Mystery, Japanese Literature

Published: October 13, 2026

Rating: 4.0 ⭐


Thank you to Avocado House and NetGalley for this gifted eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t expect this book to be so science-heavy! It’s built around Laplace’s Demon theory by Pierre-Simon de Laplace: if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every particle in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed and can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics. In other words, the person can predict the future in a scientific way. So, basically, this is what this book is about.

The story starts with a body found in a hot-spring town, dead from hydrogen sulfide poisoning. Geochemist Shusuke Aoe gets called in to look into it. Everyone writes it off as an accident, but something just doesn’t sit right. While he’s there, he meets a young woman looking for her missing friend, and she calls herself the Laplace’s Witch. Then two months later, the same kind of death happens somewhere else in Japan, and she’s there again. So, is there a connection between these two murders?

The story moves pretty slowly, and there’s a lot of science talk. If that’s not really your thing, you might find yourself zoning out in the middle. But I did really like how the mystery itself was put together. I kept reading because I had to know how it all connected and what the big reveal would be. It kept me curious the whole way through.

That said, it’s not my favorite Higashino book. The sci-fi side of things felt more prominent than I’d hoped, and the twists plus the ending just didn’t fully click for me. But I loved the characters. Their backstories were so interesting. That was definitely my favorite part.

Overall, I still enjoyed reading it. It’s a good murder mystery, just a little different from what I was expecting. Not my top pick from him, but still worth the read. I highly recommend it if you're a science nerd and love mystery.

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