Penance

This novel is an exploration of how a single violent act can have repercussions far past it's initial horror. It starts with the murder of a young girl while she and her friends are enjoying time together on a day off of school. The girls' mother, unable to accept that her daughter was the target of random violence, curses the other girls for not being able to stop it or identify the killer. The girls go on with school and scatter around the world but are still haunted by that single defining moment of their childhoods. This is a dark, character driven mystery and one I enjoyed more than Minato's other book, Confession.