Friday
means Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott here. She will have the
list up later today, but in the meantime Patrick Ohl is back this week with his
review of The Devotion of Suspect X
by Keigo Higashino.
In the past, I frequently complained about
the state of the modern mystery, but in recent months, I’ve discovered
wonderful authors like William L. DeAndrea and Bill Pronzini. Still, mysteries
in the classic, GAD-style mould often seem unfairly ignored— how else to
explain the lack of interest in publishing the work of Paul Halter translated
into English?
And yet, the opposite seems to be true in
Japan, where authors like Soji Shimada (author of the brilliant The Tokyo Zodiac Murders) sell well! I’m
not Japanese, nor do I understand the language, so I really cannot comment in
depth here. However, on the blog Detection by Moonlight, there recently [note:
this review was first written in 2011] was
a guest blog written by Ho-Ling, who pointed out some Japanese detective
novels (translated into English) worth checking out. After searching my library
catalogue, I managed to find one of the books Ho-Ling mentions in his final
list (which includes a disclaimer, “not a complete list”): Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X.
This novel is very recent—published in
Japan in 2005, and published in English in 2011. (Hey! That’s this year! That
means this book is the first “new” book I’ve reviewed on this blog!) It’s
encouraging that I was on the holds waiting list for a few weeks before I got
ahold of this book. My library also owns five copies of it—another encouraging
sign. You never know, we could see a Silver Age for mysteries someday soon…
But I digress. The Devotion of Suspect X is about Yasuko Hanaoka, a divorced
single mother. Her daughter, Misato, is a teenager attending high school and an
active part of the badminton squad. Suddenly, one night, her ex-husband shows
up at her doorstep. Things escalate and before you know it, he becomes violent
towards Misato. Alarmed, Yasuko attacks him, and with the help of her daughter,
in a desperate act of preservation, she strangles him…
Her neighbour next door is a high school
math teacher named Ishigami. The man is a genius, who wishes he could devote
his life to mathematics, but circumstances forced him to teach math to students
the school refuses to fail in the first place. He has developed an infatuation
for Yasuko and when he figures out what she has done, he devotes himself to her
cause, calculating a perfect alibi for her and her daughter in order to divert
suspicion and ensure they are not punished.
You may think I’ve given the game away, but
I assure you I have not given anything away past Chapter 2. The scenes occur
swiftly, and this book is more of an inverted murder mystery. You know who the
culprit is. You know what Ishigami has set out to do. Now, you accompany the
police inspector (Kusanagi) and the amateur sleuth (a physicist, Dr. Manabu
Yukawa) as they try piecing the puzzle together.
This book pulls the inverted mystery off brilliantly. The victim, Togashi, was a despicable man: an alcoholic, abusive, an embezzler, and a stalker who would not leave his ex-wife alone. His murder was an act of self-defense, and you feel that Yasuko should not be punished for it. And so, as the sleuths close in on the solution, you aren’t rooting for them, but for the murderer.
Meanwhile, the relationships between the
characters take on a dark twist. An old lover of Yasuko’s shows up, and this
makes Ishigami jealous. He becomes a self-appointed guardian angel who takes
his role a little too seriously. This becomes disturbing, and yet in a positive
way—the personal struggles these characters go through ring a bell. As the plan
slowly crumbles apart and Ishigami struggles to get a grip on himself, you are
genuinely disturbed for his sake and
for that of Yasuko and Misato. You see just how far his devotion will take him
and every step is utterly fascinating. In short, the characters are brilliant
and draw you into the story.
But this is not a novel mired in character
angst. On the contrary, it is the ultimate showdown between the genius amateur
sleuth and his equally admirable opponent. Every word they share may or may not
carry a double meaning behind it— they relentlessly duel with each other
throughout the novel, and every line of dialogue easily keeps your interest.
Briefly put, The Devotion of Suspect X takes the inverted mystery and gives it a
whole lot of character. The translation is excellent, and if it does the
original text any justice, Higashino’s writing is beautiful. And its ultimate
success is the intellectual duel, which is as riveting as any between Columbo
and one of his adversaries.
Patrick Ohl ©2014
At The Scene Of The Crime
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1 comment:
This book is really something, isn't it? It was my favourite mystery read of last year. I'll soon be readin the next in the series: Slavation of a Saint.
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