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.
It is worth stating again that the reader enters this section of the novel with only a vague idea of what Ishigami has planned. 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.įrom this point we transition into the investigatory phase of the novel. 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. 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. 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. Probably the best place to start is to go back to the beginning and talk about the killing. With the help of a college friend, a physicist nicknamed “Detective Galileo”, Kusanagi sets out to find out what really happened. 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. 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. He heard the commotion and offers his help in hiding the crime – possibly because of his attraction to Yasuko. 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.Īs Yasuko and her daughter panic they receive a visit from their neighbor Ishigami, a high school mathematics teacher. 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. 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. The novel opens by introducing us to Yasuko, a single mother who works in a restaurant.
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. 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. Last week I did something I haven’t been able to do for a while: I read a book in a single sitting. Nothing quite makes sense, and it will take a genius to understand the genius behind this particular crime… When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that day, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one day, her comfortable world is shattered. Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, a good mother to her only child. Originally published as 容疑者Xの献身 (Japanese) in 2005.
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