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TheBookFrog

The Book Frog

Books. Book reviews. Bookish thoughts. Living a bookish life. Life in the bookstore.

The Devotion of Suspect X

The Devotion of Suspect X: A Detective Galileo Novel - Keigo Higashino, Alexander O. Smith Togashi, the shiftless ex-husband of single mom Yasuko, who for years has been harassing her and her daughter whenever he could track them down, goes one step too far at the beginning of The Devotion of Suspect X, a stately, elegantly constructed mystery by bestselling Japanese author Keigo Higashino. In a tense, terrifying scene, Yasuko and her teenage daughter kill Togashi by strangling him with an electrical cord. When her next door neighbor, a retiring middle-aged math teacher named Ishigami, takes control of the situation, Yasuko feels nothing but relieved gratitude...especially when the police come, and the alibi that Ishigami created for her holds up. Soon, however, circumstances involve an old friend of Ishigami's from college in the investigation, and a battle of brilliant minds ensues. Although the reader knows who committed the murder, and why, and how, the surprises in this mystery never stop. The revelations twist and turn and double back, right up until the very last sentence, which is a jaw-dropper, and the perfect end to an utterly satisfying read. The Devotion of Suspect X is not the first book of Keigo Higashino's to be translated into English, but it's highly likely that it will be the book that finally gets his name into the consciousness of American readers.