Saturday, August 15, 2015

The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino

The Devotion of Suspect XThe Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I chanced upon this book when I was talking to a friend about a recent Bollywood movie, "Drishyam" and he told me that he had already read the book. The movie being an adaptation of a book was not much talked about so, curious, I decided to check it out. Since I recently bought a Kindle as well, this also served as my first Kindle book. I am now a tech savvy reader. Yay!

Turned out that the movie was very vaguely similar to the book. The premise was shared but the movie could not match the book's level of suspense. Higashino had done a brilliant job in creating the plot and since this was a detective story, that is what counted the most. The writing style, unfortunately, was a bit too unadorned for my liking. The uniqueness of the story lay in the fact that the culprit was already known. It was the cover up that was a mystery. Higashino revealed the mystery bit by bit through his characters and as a result, I, the humble reader, was hooked till the very last page. Higashino kept the entire plot extremely rational and believable while twisting it around in unpredictable ways. As I found out later, this book is part of a detective series which is quite popular in Japan.

The story revolves around a high school maths teacher - Tetsuya Ishigami. He is in love with his neighbour - Yasuko Hanaoka, a single mother with a daughter. Yasuko has a turbulent past which she is trying to shake off but the ghost from that past, her ex husband, keeps reappearing and troubling her time and again. On this particular occasion circumstances lead her and the daughter, Misato, to accidentally kill the evil ex. Ishigami then steps in to offer his help in getting rid of the dead body. When the murder is reported to the authorities, the body is a John Doe with fingerprints burnt off and face smashed in. Kusanagi leads the investigation and Manbu Yukawa - Detective Galileo - finds himself being sucked into the case. The deeper he digs, the more formidable the challenge appears. Until he realises that he is up against an old friend, the genius Ishigami.

Although the plot was brilliantly made, I found many a parts entirely far fetched. Plus the weak character building and simple language did not help much. The only reason I got through the book was the suspense, which, as I have already mentioned, was brilliant. I might have been much more impressed in another age but now, it came across as a brilliant story, nothing more.

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