Who doesn’t like a good crime story from time to time? There’s no other genre so “unputdownable”, a perfect fit for a long train journey or flight. We turn the pages, miles pass, the plot gets thicker and thicker – and before we reach our target destination, we are desperate to know who the culprit is.
I have been reading Keigo Higashino‘s Salvation of a Saint in exactly such circumstances – in a long distance train from Warsaw to Wrocław. I read it all in one sitting – almost swallowed it in whole (though it might not be the most fortunate word in the context of this story), which is not very common for me, being a rather slow reader among our Tajfuny team.
Picture this situation: a wealthy married couple, rather young (with their own problems, but who among us doesn’t have some?) invites some friends for dinner. They are having a great time together, a few days later the wife leaves to visit her family in northern Japan. In her absence the husband is poisoned. Only two coffee cups seem somewhat unusual in the crime scene. Is this a cleverly arranged murder? A manslaughter in the heat of passion? A suicide?
The detectives have a hard nut to crack, and so do we, the readers. When the wife, Ayane, is brought to the police station for the questioning, we are already sure she is the criminal. But how did she manage that? What was her motive? With every conversation, every questioning new surprisng facts are exposed. We found out that everyone has a hidden agenda.
Clues and evidences, detective gut and sympathies mix and make the investigation difficult. The police will reach out to Manabu Yukawa, professor of physics, whom we now from Devotion of Suspect X. But even this Sherlock Holmes of Japanese Studies will not have an easy job figuring out this mastermind of a crime.
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