Mysteries Ahoy!

Last week I did something I haven’t been able to do for a while: I read a book in a single sitting. After months of trying to slot in reading in fifteen or thirty minute increments, there was something wonderfully satisfying about being able to read at leisure and see an entire idea worked through without any interruptions or distractions.

I am particularly pleased that The Devotion of Suspect X was the title I was able to do this for given that this is a book that I would not have wanted to put down.

The novel opens by introducing us to Yasuko, a single mother who works in a restaurant. On this day her ex-husband, a lowlife who has continued to harass her for money since their divorce, turns up at the restaurant demanding to talk with her. When she tries to shrug him off, he suggests he will go and meet her daughter at school and talk to her instead – forcing her to reluctantly agree to let him visit her at home after work.

The discussion between them does not go well and after he threatens that he is not just there for money and plans on being around a lot, the situation escalates and after a brief struggle he is killed.

As Yasuko and her daughter panic they receive a visit from their neighbor Ishigami, a high school mathematics teacher. He heard the commotion and offers his help in hiding the crime – possibly because of his attraction to Yasuko.

While we are not privy to every aspect of his preparations, we are aware of the general idea that Ishigami intends to use his knowledge of logic and procedure to predict what the investigators will be looking for. After Yasuko places herself in Ishigami’s hands the perspective shifts to that of Kusanagi, a Tokyo detective, who is handed the case of a man body found in the street with battering to the face and damage to the fingers to prevent identification. With the help of a college friend, a physicist nicknamed “Detective Galileo”, Kusanagi sets out to find out what really happened.

Probably the best place to start is to go back to the beginning and talk about the killing. Here I think Higashino does an excellent job of letting you know the geography of a space and to convey the movements of each person involved. There is a chaos to the death which fits with it not having been planned, but I was never lost as to what was going on or why.

I think he is also pretty effective in explaining why Ishigami offers to get involved in a cover-up and why Yasuko will ultimately accept. The involvement of her daughter places her at risk and while the way Ishigami offers is risky, which he acknowledges, her hope is that they can avoid being caught up in the investigation at all.

From this point we transition into the investigatory phase of the novel. It is worth stating again that the reader enters this section of the novel with only a vague idea of what Ishigami has planned. Some parts of the plan seem to tie in with our expectations – the creation of a false alibi for instance – while others are much more surprising.

I would love to be able to discuss the construction of this novel in some detail as I think Higashino employs some really interesting ideas. Unfortunately I can’t do that without signposting the tricks that are used. In the most general terms though I can say that I am most impressed by the way the construction of the narrative echoes the key themes of the novel. The novel is layered extremely cleverly, building up to a really interesting and satisfying conclusion.

For all of Ishigami’s meticulous planning, the one thing he is unable to predict is that Yukawa (Detective Galileo) will become involved in the case. This personal connection between criminal and detective only heightens the cat and mouse game aspects of the plot. These two men know each other and are intimately acquainted with how each other think which allows each a certain insight into what the other is likely to do.

In his review (linked below), JJ describes how one of the reasons he was unsatisfied with the novel was how some key clues in the case are largely inaccessible to the reader because they are reflections of that relationship. He is not incorrect – one of Yukawa’s key observations that points him in the right direction is largely a matter of intuition. Reading back over the book I do think Higashino provides a couple of hints as to what that might be but they are very subtle – more useful to justify the observation after the fact than to help the reader actually make it.

While I acknowledge that this aspect of the story is not necessarily fair play, I feel that is actually the point Higashino is attempting to address in this novel. Were crime solving simply about the triumph of logical reasoning then Ishigawi would be victorious. His plan is excellent, extremely carefully set up and predicts nearly every line of investigation the police might have. He out-thinks the police and Yukawa so he really should succeed.

I would also add that while that aspect of the case may not entirely play fair with the reader, every other aspect of the ending does. I agree with TomCat, whose review is also linked below, that the final revelation – one which I think is chiefly responsible for the book’s enormous success – is clued fairly and clearly. It makes for a superb and powerful ending and I love the way it reflects back on so many of the novel’s strongest themes.

You may notice that for all I have written about the book I have barely touched on either Kusanagi or Yukawa. The latter directly features only in a few sequences when he is consulted while we never really get to know Kusanagi on a personal level. In other cases that might be disappointing but I think it reflects that our focus falls so much on the fascinating and perhaps rather ambiguous figure of Ishigawi.

One benefit of this is that while the book is part of a series it can be enjoyed as if it were a standalone title. This is particularly welcome as the English translations are not being done in order.

This was my second encounter with Higashino’s work and I am happy to say that I enjoyed this every bit as much as Malice. Both works are superb examples of the inverted mystery form and I would happily recommend either to you. On the back of these two experiences I have gone ahead and acquired his other translated works so expect to see further posts about his novels in the future.

The Verdict: A superb inverted mystery novel with an engaging premise and characters.

Second Opinions

JJ @ The Invisible Event had a very different take on this novel than I did, commenting on the lack of detection within the story. I didn’t read it through that lens so it didn’t bother me but I could see that bothering readers – particularly if the book has been hyped as a masterpiece of logical deduction (I agree that it isn’t).

TomCat @ Beneath the Stains of Time offers a much more positive review, acknowledging there are some weaknesses in Yukawa’s deductive reasoning (which is, as he says, based on some intuition) but notes that the brilliant final twist is fairly clued.

Fictionophile found the book to be ingeniously plotted and loved the multi-layered puzzle.