The Devotion of Suspect X: Book Review

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I am not a fan of crime thrillers and since I've read Dan Brown's novels I've become wary of picking one randomly. So when Blogadda announced their this week's book for review, it took me a while before signing up for it. 

The Devotion of Suspect X is a crime mystery written by the award winning author Keigo Higashino who is also the President of Mystery Writers of Japan. 

The crisp whodunit plot is like a game of Chess where two masterminds; a mathematician extraordinaire and a physicist cum unofficial detective play their moves and constantly keep outdoing each other. The writer gives clues throughout the story but its only in the end that the reader is able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Yasuko lives a modest life with her daughter Misato in a Tokyo suburb and works in a lunch shop. She has completely let go off her past life as a nightclub hostess in order to escape her blackmailing ex husband Togashi. But her comfortable life is shattered when Togashi turns up in her apartment and ends up dead. Yasuko's neighbour Ishigami who is a mathematical genius comes to her rescue and out of his admiration for her helps her in covering up the crime. He uses is logical brain to mislead the police and asks the mother daughter to keep following his instructions.

He creates a perfect trap to deceive detective Kusanagi who is investigating the case. The hiccup in Ishigami's plan comes in the form of an old classmate and brilliant physicist Yukawa who also is a friend of the detective. Yukawa starts his personal investigation trying to solve the problem that Ishigami's mathematician mind has created.

Why does Ishigami who is devoid of all the emotions has such a devotion towards Yasuko that he goes to the extent of risking his own life? Why does he create a scenario where all the paths lead to Yasuko suspecting her of the murder? And above all, what is more difficult; to create an unsolvable problem or to solve it? The story got me asking many such questions and the answers to all of them lie in the last few pages.

The Devotion of Suspect X is a great one sitting read and did keep me interested till I flipped the last page.

Book : The Devotion Of Suspect X
Author: Keigo Higashino 
Publisher: Hachette India
Price: 350/-

Pages: 374

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