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.

Detective Galileo / 探偵ガリレオ

Detective Galileo is a short story collection by Higashino Keigo about how you probably learned everything you ever needed to know to solve crimes in your 10th grade science class.

The stories center around Kusanagi Shunpei, a detective in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, who often goes to his friend Yukawa Manabu, a physics professor, for help with particularly confounding cases. The stories are interesting and have cool ideas behind them, but probably won't satisfy readers looking for traditional detective stories.