![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/The-Devotion-of-Suspect-X.jpg\" "\\"The-Devotion-of-Suspect-X\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nTHE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X. By Keigo Higashino. Minotaur Books. 298 pages. $24.99<\/p>\n
A Japanese police procedural centered around a lunch caf\u00e9 counter lady, a high school math teacher, a physics professor and a police lieutenant doesn\u2019t seem to hold much promise.\u00a0 Neither does the premise:\u00a0 By page 20,\u00a0 Yasuko, the lady, has murdered her husband; by page 28, the math teacher Ishigami has offered to help her cover up the crime; and the rest of the book consists of the police trying to break the alibi he produces.\u00a0 Just how interesting could the unraveling be?<\/p>\n
Very, as it turns out.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason this book, the author\u2019s first in English translation, won multiple awards for best mystery novel in Japan.\u00a0 Ishigami is a math genius relegated to teaching reluctant high school students for a living.\u00a0 His plan has all the intricacies of the most sophisticated mathematical formula.\u00a0 Lieutenant Kusanagi, unlike his junior partner, smells something wrong with the alibi, but can\u2019t pick up any scent; you can almost see the Columbo-like wrinkles in his coat and forehead as he tries to cipher the answer to the problem.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for him(but not Ishigami), his mentor Professor Yukawa is known as \u201cDetective Gallileo\u201d for his brilliant solutions.\u00a0 Yukawa knew Ishigami in college; while the lieutenant conducts his investigation, Yukawa rekindles his friendship with Ishigami.\u00a0 The writing blasts along here, the reader privy to the clues at the same time the police get them.\u00a0 Ishigami proceeds at his own pace in protecting Yasuko, dropping a hint now and then that is \u201cmerely a breadcrumb set in their path to lure\u201d the police and the reader astray.<\/p>\n
As Yukawa points out to Ishigami in one of their cat-and-mouse discussions, however, \u201cIt\u2019s more difficult to create the problem than to solve it.\u201d\u00a0 Yukawa turns out to be as perspicacious an investigator as Ishigami is a perpetrator.\u00a0 When he finally deciphers the \u201cblind spot\u201d that prevents the police from seeing what\u2019s right before them, he forces Ishigami\u2019s hand.\u00a0 When the devoted suspect plays out the plan, both the reader and Kusanagi are astonished. Yukawa is just saddened.<\/p>\n
The author has matched his \u201cvillain\u201d here, concealing the solution while leaving it in plain sight.\u00a0 It\u2019s a masterful job, and one that leaves us looking forward to another visit to Tokyo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There he goes again. Not long back from the mean streets of L.A., and before that,\u00a0 the Perigord region of France, Bob Moyer is now on a fictional journey to Japan. By Robert Moyer THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X. By Keigo Higashino. Minotaur Books. 298 pages. $24.99 A Japanese police procedural centered around a lunch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[47,27,48],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mysteries","tag-japanese-fiction","tag-mystery","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}