topics: |  fiction | crime | japan |

Ran into an used copy at the Bookworm, a bookstore in Leh, Ladakh. The writing was crisp and got me hooked. the mystery unfolded slowly.

Unlike the typical murder mystery, here you are rooting for the murderer, instead of the detectives. You know at the very start that Yasuko somewhat accidentally strangled Shinji Togashi with the cord of their electric heater. Ex-husband Togashi has lost his job and comes to Yasuko only to bum money off her - and the fact that he has traced down Yasuko and her daughter in their new life after she left the massage parlour is a low point in their life.

So, all this builds up sympathy for Yasuko. Now, the question that keeps the suspense up is if the police will see through the devious moves of their nextdoor neighbour, the logical genius Ishigami, who works out a scheme to avoid pinning the murder onto them.

A key figure in the novel is that of the physicist Manabu Yukawa, who helps out his friend, detective Kusanagi, of the Tokyo Police. He appears in several of Higashino's novels, and Kusanagi calls him "detective Galileo"; this is the moniker by which this series is known in Japan. Before Suspect X, Higashino had written two short story collections featuring Yukawa. Since then, there have been two more novels and several more short story collections.

This story is more of psychological thriller, as we are party to the tensions developing among Yasuko and Ishigami as the detectives - and particularly Yukawa - start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. However, Ishigami has a final ace up his sleeve. But he hasn't considered the tensions that Yasuko and her daughter are in.

Sparse characterization

I settled in with this book after a nice lunch at one of the few places in Leh where you get ladakhi food - the tiny "Ladakhi kitchen", at the end of the warren of restaurants on the floor above the bustling Moti market, run by a friendly lady.

The book quickly gripped me and transported me away from the himalayas into downtown Tokyo with the Sumida river lazing through the slums on both sides...

The characterization is postmodern and sparse - the novelist rarely tells you about the characters' thoughts. Everything is very realistic. All the major characters - particularly the psychological drives of the loner Ishigami, are very nicely drawn. Yukawa is a bit of a superman, in the Mycroft Holmes mould - but then all super sleuths need to be.

The Tokyo descriptions, e.g. the hobos around the river, also add a lot of realism.

Plot nuances

However, one inconsistency kept bothering me.

Page after page, I kept wondering why the efficient logical-minded Ishigami
had thrown the body into a place where it would be found, rather than throw
it into the river, maybe with weights.  I also kept wondering how he
managed to take the body to the riverside on a cycle.

The surprise ending answered these questions, but it added new questions as
to why Ishigami felt the need for such a lot of subterfuge when just
throwing the body in the river would have been enough.  Togashi would have
gone missing, and given that he was not very social - no one would have
pressed it too hard.

A few other loose ends kept coming to me.  The murdered husband, Shinji
Togashi - has no friends, no leads, no life. He has no other dimensions to
his existence other than a room he has rented, and the fact that he had
inquired after Yasuko a few days back at her old club.

Ishigami's whole plan is based on the fact that there would be no records
other than teeth, for Togashi.  But a man who had been a used-car salesman
for many years, surely it is possible his fingerprint or other records
would be available somewhere.

The apartment where the murder happens is 204.  While the detectives check
apartment 203 (Ishigami) to see if any noises were heard on the day of the
murder, they don't seem to be wanting to try 205 (maybe there isn't any).
Also they don't check the floor below - but then, floor 1 is perhaps for
parking etc. 

Also, puncturing the tyres of the bicycle with a pin was poor logic for
Ishigami - he could have simply deflated it.

Also, would a mathematician know things like:
	[Ishigami to Yasuko]: Forensics is quite advanced these days. They can
	usually tell the murder weapon used by looking at the marks it
	leaves. p.172

The novel uses a simplistic view of the P=NP problem from Theoretical
Computer Science.  In this version, the question asked is whether
verifying a given solution can be as difficult as finding the solution.
The intuition is that if a (N)ondeterministic machine takes (P)olynomial
time in order to solve a problem, then a deterministic machine can
verify the solution in (P)olynomial time.  The P=NP question is
whether for the class of all such NP problems, a deterministic machine can
also find a solution in Polynomial time.  While the re-statement is
fundamentally correct, laypersons can be misled by the simplistic
statement; it tends to trivialize the question, which is actually about a
large and important class of computational problems, and relies on a deep
mathematical intuition that would surely have been known to Ishigami.

Bollywood adaptation?

The book won the Naoki prize: a 1 mn yen prize for "the best work of
popular literature in any format".  With sales of over 2 mn copies, clearly
the book had made quite an impact on the Japanese reading public.

Now it seems that there is a bollywood version of the story in the offing.
'Devotion of Suspect X' is being produced by Balaji Motion Pictures, with
Kangana Raut and Saif Ali Khan in the lead roles, and noted director Sujoy
Ghosh of Kahaani fame.


kangana-to-star-opposite-saif-in-devotion-of-suspect-x zee news feb 2015

[However the movie, which was due to start shooting in April 2015, is
postponed and most of the cast has changed. 

Excerpts

At 7:35 A.M. Ishigami left his apartment as he did every weekday morning.
Just before stepping out onto the street, he glanced at the mostly full
bicycle lot, noting the absence of the green bicycle. p.1 (opening line)

[this subtle hint is almost all we are told about ishigami's obsession with
Yasuko].

---

Ishigami looked at the face of the dead man. Whatever expression he’d been
wearing had already faded. He looked more like a lump of clay than a
person. Still, it was possible to see that this man had been a real looker
in his youth. Though he had clearly gained a little bit of weight in recent
years, his was the kind of face women found easy to like.

And Yasuko fell in love with him. When Ishigami thought this, it was like
a little bubble popped inside him and envy spread through his chest. He
shook his head, embarrassed at his own capacity to have such feelings at a
time like this.  p.45-6


---

Yukawa to Kusanagi:
   If we assume that the tickets really were bought to establish an alibi,
   that she put them in the pamphlet expecting you to come and ask her for
   them, I’d say that makes her an adversary to be feared. 86


---

They went up the stairs just before Kiyosu Bridge, in the shadow of a nearby
office building.

Seeing their reflection in a glass door on the first floor, Ishigami shook
his head. “How have you managed to stay so young, Yukawa? You still have a
full head of hair. How different we two are!” 115

[Yukawa later uses this remark to infer that Ishigami was in love;
otherwise he would not have thought in this way.  At the same time, there
is no evidence that Ishigami has become more particular about his
appearance. ]

Why study math?

one comment rose above the noise and reached his ears....

“Hey, Teach, aren’t there universities that don’t require a math test to get
in?” one of the students was saying. “Why should us guys who are going to
those schools have to pass math?”

Ishigami looked in the direction of the student, a boy named
Morioka.  Ishigami knew his reputation. The boy already had a long history
of warnings for riding to school on a motorbike, which was strictly
forbidden.

Ishigami had turned to the blackboard to begin an explanation of some of
the trickier problems on the year-end exam, but Morioka’s comment made him
stop and turn around. This wasn’t the kind of thing he could let slide. “I
hear you like motorbikes, Morioka. Ever watched a race?”

[explains the relevance of math for planning a race]

“... what I’m teaching here is only the tip of the iceberg — a doorway
into the world of mathematics. ... All I’m testing here is whether or not
you know where the doorway is. I’m giving you choices.”

As he talked, Ishigami scanned the room. Every year there was someone
who asked why they had to study math. Every year, he gave the same
explanation. This time, since it was a student who liked motorbikes,
he’d used the example of motorbike racing. Last year, it was an
aspiring musician, so he talked about the math used in designing
musical technology. But no matter the specifics of the discussion,
which changed from year to year, it was all old hat for Ishigami. 146-8



Ishigami teaching math. scene from the movie Yogisha X no Kenshin
(容疑者Ｘの献身).  Actor: Shinichi Tsutsumi.

Ishigami vs Kudo

[Kudo takes mother and daughter out to dinner. On the way back]

Misato slowly turned back toward her mother. “I just thought maybe
it’s not a good idea to betray that other guy.”

“That guy? Who?”

Misato stared Yasuko in the eye and said nothing, though it was clear
she meant Mr. Ishigami. She wasn’t saying anything because she didn’t
want the taxi driver to hear.

“Well, I don’t think that’s anything you need to be worrying about,” Yasuko
said, leaning back in her seat.  p.288

---
[Kusanagi's thought about Kudo's apartment]:
Not so much messy as desolate.

---
Yukawa to Ishigami:
   the P = NP problem. Basically, it asks whether it’s more difficult to
   think of the solution to a problem yourself or to ascertain if someone
   else’s answer to the same problem is correct.

review by barry forshaw, Independent

		http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-devotion-of-suspect-x-by-keigo-higashino-2345431.html

Can two million Japanese readers be wrong? The Devotion of Suspect X has
not only sold a jaw-dropping number of copies in its native country, but
has become something of a national obsession.

Ishigami is a super-intelligent mathematician holding down a dead-end job
at a local school. His one source of pride is his devastatingly logical
intellect, and he quickly assesses [Yasuko's] situation, realising that the
mother and daughter were attempting to protect themselves. Ishigami
devises a plan: he will help them dispose of the body, on the condition
that they put themselves totally in his care. And when the authorities
arrive, other idiosyncratic characters are introduced, including Professor
Yukawa, a physicist helping the police who was a classmate of the helpful
mathematician neighbour. What follows is fascinating, tense and endlessly
surprising.

Anyone who regularly writes about the crime genre is repeatedly asked:
what's the next trend? If there were more genre authors in Japan as
accomplished as this, the answer would be simple: Japanese crime
fiction. But Higashino appears to be something of an evolutionary sport who
has grown up paying obeisance to no other novelists – and (so far)
inspiring no imitators. As well as its minutely detailed picture of life in
modern Japan, a host of other pleasures crowd into The Devotion of Suspect
X, including a postmodern take on the conventions of the detective novel.

author bio

Born in Osaka, Higashino started out as an engineer at Nippon Denso.  At age
27, his novel Hōkago (After School) won the Edogawa Rampo Award (finest
unpublished novel by a new writer).  Since then he moved to Tokyo and become
a full-time writer.

today the reclusive Higashino is one of Japan's leading novelists.


Interview:
http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/02/11/is-this-guy-the-next-steig-larsson/

“Some writers aim to move their readers, others want to write beautiful
sentences. I want readers to be continually surprised by my ideas,” he says.