The Devotion of Suspect X / 容疑者Xの献身

I had The Devotion of Suspect X on my bookshelf for a while. It was famous and supposed to be really good, so I eagerly bought it. Then I realized it was technically third in the “Detective Galileo” series, so I bought and read Detective Galileo. And any interest I had in reading Suspect X dissipated. I hadn’t abandoned it completely—it was famous, after all—but I had no active desire to read it anymore. I figured I’d get around to it eventually… and eventually has finally come.

Fortunately, The Devotion of Suspect X is much, much better than the Detective Galileo stories, structured as an actual mystery novel and not a series of cheap science fair experiments. I didn’t love it, but I did enjoy it.

Yasuko Hanaoka is a single mom just trying to make it in the world. However, her world is disrupted when her abusive ex-husband, Shinji Togashi, manages to track her down. He says he’s changed and wants to get back together, the same song and dance Yasuko has heard plenty of times before. Their confrontation in Yasuko’s apartment turns physical, and she kills Shinji (in part to protect her daughter) before she even realizes what’s happened.

The commotion attracts the attention of Yasuko’s neighbor, high school teacher Tetsuya Ishigami. Fortunately for Yasuko, Ishigami teaches math and not civics, since instead of turning her in he offers to help Yasuko cover up the crime.

This might seem like an odd set-up, since we know who did it. It’s like an inverted mystery, but not exactly. We know the basic set-up of the crime, but aren’t privy to the specifics of Ishigami and Yasuko’s plan. In other words, rather than trying to figure out the answer to the murder, we’re trying to figure out how Ishigami and Yasuko engineered the evidence the police find, given what we know of the solution.

While Suspect X is a murder mystery, a large part of the book is about the character drama. Obviously Yasuko is in a precarious, stressful position since she killed Shinji, but on top of that there’s tension in the power and control Ishigami has over her as a result of his help, especially when Ishigami discovers Yasuko has a suitor. There’s conflict between Yasuko and the suitor as she tries to balance living a normal life with her guilt over Shinji and her fear of Ishigami. And Yasuko still has to care for the emotional wellbeing of her daughter.

But the pathos isn’t just limited to Yasuko’s side of the story; there’s also plenty with Yukawa, the series detective and so-called Galileo. Typically he gets involved in a case because Kusanagi, a police detective and Yukawa’s friend, needs Yukawa to explain some inscrutable phenomenon in the crime, but there (thankfully) isn’t any science here. Instead, Kusanagi is one of the detectives investigating Shinji’s death, and Yukawa learns from Kusanagi that one of the suspect’s next-door neighbors is Ishigami—who happens to be a college friend of Yukawa. Yukawa goes to visit Ishigami… and, being the cool super-genius he is, immediately realizes that Ishigami might be connected to Shinji’s death. So Yukawa decides to investigate personally, while grappling with the fact that his friend might be a murderer. Yukawa isn’t as forthcoming with Kusanagi as usual (since he doesn’t want to implicate his friend if he’s actually innocent), which puts a strain on Yukawa and Kusanagi’s relationship.

And, for the most part, I just didn’t care about any of this drama. For Yasuko, while her plight is sympathetic, it all stems from her choice to cover up the crime rather than turn herself in. (I think the crime was pretty defensible, especially with her daughter as a witness to what happened—although I also understand it’s easy to just say that, but a massive gamble when your life is actually on the line.) I didn’t actively want bad things to happen to her, but it was all the consequences of her actions. Additionally, the two main possible outcomes for the book appear to be either Yasuko getting away with killing Shinji or getting exposed and going to jail for an arguably justified death, neither of which is particularly appealing.

Meanwhile for Yukawa, Higashino just loves Yukawa too much for me to have actually ever felt concerned for him. He’s cool and smart and perceptive and stylish and successful and loyal and moral and empathetic and special. He’s so pained by Ishigami’s involvement in the crime, since even though he feels strongly about crime he’s still loyal to his friends, and he’s the only one who ever figures anything out since he’s so smart, and everyone who meets him immediately understands how cool and commanding he is and intuitively understands that he’s different from everyone else and is the only one who has the power to solve the case, and his mere presence is able to disrupt Ishigami’s otherwise perfect plan. Like, jeez, obviously the detective needs to be smart, but most novels show that by having the detective solve the case, not by droning on and on about how great they are. Constantly insisting how great Yukawa is did nothing to make me actually like the guy, and it was clear that nothing really bad would ever happen to him.

But at the same time, I also understand why all the character scenes were required by the mystery plot. All the character drama could be swept away and just leave the bare bones of the mystery, but the puzzle would suffer for it. So while the characters’ plights didn’t draw me in, they’re written competently and serve the purpose they need to in the book.

The Devotion of Suspect X is a fine book. There was too much drama about characters I didn’t care about (including Higashino's beloved Yukawa) for me to be fully entranced, but the mystery is built on a solid idea, and it’s miles better than Detective Galileo. I can at least agree that, of the Japanese mystery novels available in English I’ve read, Suspect X is one of the better ones.