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I had quite a few words to look up to understand the nuances of emotion and tension in this book. To give context to that, I've already read 20+ novels, most of them in this genre. If you've read more extensively you may have fewer to look up.

The writing is is literary - expect poetic turns of phrase, heavy use of idioms, and small details being thrown in to set the mood of scenes. You will need a very solid base of grammar through N1. Vocabulary wise you should be very comfortable with crime vocab (police terminology such as ranks and departments in particular) as well as the range of words used to describe emotional state, personality traits, virtues, and vices.

The difficulty is not to say it isn't enjoyable. It's very well written and I expect the audience is simply normal, educated adults. It's not my usual airport novel crime thriller, but it's not classic lit with archaic grammar either. I had to carefully think about many sentences whereas books like スマホを落としただけなのに or 夜警 I could plow through and everything clicked into place because of how straightforward it was. I will note that I brought some of the more difficult sentences to my tutors to verify if I was understanding things correctly and they both commented that while they could understand all the kanji used in the sentence, they didn't know the readings of several off hand. It would appear there is a fairly heavy sprinkling of kanji for words that either a) are typically written in kana or b) are infrequently used enough that native speakers forget them.

All this said, the writing style delighted me. I really, truly enjoyed the atmosphere set by the author. Here is an example of a two sentence scene setter:

庁舎に擦り寄るように建てられた資材倉庫の壁が視界を塞いでいる。三上は半回転させた自席の椅子にもたれ、錆で赤茶けたその壁をぼんやりと見つめていた。

and another describing a person's appearance:

剝き出しの岩盤を連想させる形相だった。

and another:

灯のせいもあろうが、顔には皺の数だけ疲労の影が落ちていた。

and another single sentence scene setter:

警務部長室と記者室の間で、そして刑事部と記者室の狭間で、翻弄され続けた広報室は消耗し、疲弊し、嘆息の巣と化していた。

These should also help you appraise the difficulty of the book to an extent.

The audiobook is ok. The voice actor does a very nice, steady narration but it's not like some other books with multiple actors, sound effects, and the like. He also doesn't really act at all, so expect tense scenes to be read in the same even tone as all the others. I also noticed some sloppy editing towards the end of the first volume (duplicated sentences).

Basic plot: A police officer who works for the public information division has his daughter run away; around the same time an cold case that disgraced the police force 14 years prior is resurrected and the relationship between the media and police starts to deteriorate.