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"…The best mystery novel I read [last year] was a standalone translation of a Japanese novel, The Devotion of Suspect X… a puzzle mystery that manages never to become a "cozy…" Ishigami, a mathematical genius who, through the vicissitudes of academic life has become a mere high school teacher, has fallen in love with the divorced mother-of-one who lives next door, and when she commits a killing in self-defense, he takes over the crime scene and arranges a brilliant deception that completely fools the police… [The Devotion of Suspect X] is smart at every level. Each revelation is smarter than the illusion it tears aside. And the conclusion, which depends on understanding of human character rather than logic or science, is both satisfying and frustrating. Satisfying, because it is utterly just and true to character; frustrating, because quite against our own moral sense we find ourselves rooting for the bad guy – because we understand him so well he doesn't seem all that bad." -Orson Scott Card
“Higashino won Japan’s Naoki Prize for Best Novel with this stunning thriller about miscarried human devotion, a bestseller in Japan. The author successfully combines unquestionable reasoning with unquenchable pain. In this brutally laconic translation, cold logic battles warm hearts throughout this elegant proof of the wages of sin, in which everyone suffers and no one can ever win.” --Publishers Weekly (starred review)“The Devotion of Suspect X has all the brilliant intricacy of the best Golden Age mysteries - puzzle within puzzle, twist after twist - with a modern sensibility. It is a wonderful, fresh take on the classic mystery's intellectual struggle between protagonist and antagonist, adds to it all the right amounts of tension and pacing, places it in a fascinating setting, and gives of all of this plenty of heart." --Jan Burke, New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award winning author of Kidnapped and Bones
"Japanese crime writers excel at many things: one is the slow tightening of the noose that's at the fast-pounding heart of the police procedural. The Devotion of Suspect X is a terrific book in that tradition and it's about time American readers got a crack at it." --SJ Rozan, Edgar Award winning author of Winter and Night and On the Line
“The Devotion of Suspect X is elegant and spare and gripping and vivid. Most of all, however, it is deeply moving, and this is what sets it apart!” --Jesse Kellerman, bestselling author of Trouble and The Executor
"Irresistible! A mind-twisting story that will have readers plunging in to try to solve the crime before the math genius, the physics professor, or the cop get there first." --Nancy Pickard, New York Times bestselling author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning and The Virgin of Small Plains
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Devotion of Suspect X,
By Pithy (B.C. Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Devotion of Suspect X (Hardcover)
A police procedural with compelling mathematician vs physicist, interesting and well done. Surprising ending however completely unlikely. Memorable characters and setting enjoyable. Was missed when finished.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Logic vs. Gut,
By
This review is from: The Devotion of Suspect X (Hardcover)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Tension of Not Knowing for Sure,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Devotion of Suspect X (Hardcover)
This is the second modern Japanese detective novel I have read in the last couple of years, and on both counts I have been wonderfully entertained by authors who know how to exploit the cat-and-mouse scenarios to the fullest. In this particular story, Higashino takes the reader into the thick of a murder investigation involving the brutal slaying of Yasuko's ex-husband, Togashi. While the reader is quickly made aware of who is behind the slaying and its motive, the big challenge as to whether the police - represented by the determined Detective Kusanagi and the cerebral Dr. Yukawa - will be able to make an arrest. Plaguing their investigation is the lack of certainty as to how the evidence comes together in a consistent pattern. While hunches are fine, mathematical precision is what the good doctor's great Buddhist mind seeks. The plot thickens as new leads are followed and then discarded, only to be followed by more perplexing evidence. There is everything Dostoevskian about this novel because the reader is allowed full access to the respective mindsets of hunter and quarry as they cross paths at various points in the story. To complicate matters further, the reader, if I am anything to go by, has a dilemma to contend with: moral sentiment is clearly on the side of the main suspect, a battered woman, and her devoted partner and protector in crime, which makes the wily investigators appear somewhat callous in their failure to understand the real personal emotions at stake in this whole sorry affair. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys crime thrillers that are skillfully written, resonate with a strong sense of inner conflict, and contain a psychological uncertainty as to who is ultimately right: the law or the criminal. Lots of well-timed surprises packed into this plot.
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