The Devotion of Suspect X [Kindle Edition]

Be prepared to get sucked into this new thriller from Keigo Higashino. While he's already a big name in Japan, this is his first book translated into English. It's best called a police procedural rather than just a crime novel, because every little detail Higashino includes has a point in the story. What's most unique is as soon as you begin, the murder of a man occurs, and you know exactly who did it. Straight up, it's right there, demanding you pay attention!

The mystery of the novel comes into play as the crime is investigated by the police force as well as two academics, one a physicist and the other a mathematician, both former competitors who are eager to prove their superiority to each other as well as the police detectives that they look down upon. Nothing plays out as ordinary, although the characters can be considered regular people. Rather than an all-seeing Hercule Poirot type of solution, the novel is instead about observation of facts and the interpretation of the tiniest details. Because of the amount of intricate details, sometimes the narrative slows down. In fact, at a few points, you may even be distracted and feel as if you are balancing your checkbook. Yet that's the trick Higasino plays: the monotonous details are the most revealing and ultimately solve the crime.

In addition to the mystery, the author builds credible characters, and makes their motives always remain a bit unclear. At times, while knowing `whodunit', I still found myself questioning what I already knew, and wondering how much I assumed. Seeing a snapshot of the life of middle-class Japan, with its emphasis on decorum, routine, and reputation, makes a cryptic setting for the murder and its repercussions.

Two factors bear mentioning: one, despite the complexity, the pace of the novel is subtle and quiet. This isn't an episode of CSI; there are no car chases or explosions. An intellectual challenge for the reader, it's as quiet as a crossword puzzle and much more complicated. Additionally, despite the initial murder (it was a bad guy, after all), there is no gore or expletives. None of the skin-crawling vulgarity or horrific crime scenes that some crime novels rely on appear in this story. To be honest, this is a classy crime novel, and I hope more of the series is translated into English, soon.

**This review covers the initial premise of the crime in the book, but there are, I believe, no spoilers.**

On the surface, The Devotion of Suspect X is a fairly conventional crime story of the Columbo type, where there is no mystery about the killer or their motivations, the intrigue rather being around the murderer's efforts to cover-up their crime, remove any evidence that can be traced back to them and keep the inquisitive police detectives from breaking down their alibi. It seems pretty much like a standard case of a battle of wits then, but there are a few interesting twists and unique characteristics in Keigo Higashino's carefully plotted novel.

Rather than it being the usual clever criminal arrogantly thinking they can get away with a murder, the case here is a little more involved. The murder that is covered-up at the very start of the book is not premeditated or indeed intended, but comes about rather when Yasuko Hanaoka, a former bar hostess, is protecting her daughter from her ex-husband Toshigo. The trouble starts when Yasuko, encouraged by neighbour Ishigami, agrees to let him cover the killing up for her. It is Ishigami who is the bright and intelligent criminal, a brilliant mathematician who believes he can outwit the police and use their own procedural methods against them to lead them off the trail. The police however have recourse to their own consulting scientific genius, one moreover who went to university with Ishigami and knows something of how his mind works.

Even with an intriguing set-up and strong characterisation, The Devotion of Suspect X itself would still seem to be a crime novel that follows a fairly well-trodden path, and it's one that would seem to be unlikely to throw up any real surprises. It's well written, methodically working its way through the investigation, and the characters are interesting enough to keep one guessing how they will make the leap to the next stage, where the outcome seems pretty much inevitable. There are however a few other outside factors and a more deeply plotted element that makes the story a little less predictable, and that of course is the human element in the equation.

As careful and methodically scientific as the opposing sides in the battle of wits are, this factor can never be entirely accounted for, and it's the specifically Japanese nature of there being rather more complicated impulses going on beneath the surface that give the novel its own character. I don't think it's quite enough to distinguish the novel from similar good, tightly-plotted crime fiction of this type - and the book itself could be accused of making the same mistake as its protagonist by being just a little too neat in its adhering to a scientific crime formula - but as it is, The Devotion of Suspect X manages nonetheless to be a constantly intriguing, intelligent, involving and satisfying crime novel.

Cleverly pitting the logic of a mathematician against that of a physicist, and then the physicist vs. an intuition-leaning detective, this Japanese novelist has written a clever murder mystery with an innovative ending.

There is no mystery as to the murderer: A single mother, aided by her daughter, strangles her abusive ex-husband. What then follows provides us with a chess match between her next door neighbor, a mathematician, who undertakes to create a scenario to provide the two women with iron-clad alibis, and a detective and his logic-leaning physicist friend, who analyzes each possible clue. It is an interesting technique, and one that works well.

This is the author's first major English publication (he is a big seller in Japan, where more than 2 million copies of the book have been sold), and the translation seems to have been made with the formality of the original language in mind. "Devotion" won the Naoki Prize for Best Novel, the Japanese equivalent of the National Book Award. Deservedly. And it is, here, heartily recommended.