Name: The Devotion of Suspect X
ISBN: 9780349123745

Keigo Higashino

Yasuko Hanaoka thought she had escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day, the situation quickly escalates, and Togashi ends up dead. Yasuko's next-door-neighbor Ishigami offers his help, not only disposing of the body, but plotting the cover-up as well.

The Devotion of Suspect X

not a big fan of crime fictions but i got this as a gift and it was pretty good ! 

aahir

Enjoyably breezes by as you think you're seeing both sides, until that ending, which is one hell of a rug pull! And abruptly tragic at that.

c0up

Emma Cragg

Telat tapi baru sekarang akhirnya bisa baca buku ini. Berlatar di Jepang, seorang detektif dari kepolisian mati-matian berusaha mencari kelemahan alibi dari pembunuhan kejahatan yang dibentuk secara sempurna — penuh dengan celah namun tidak bisa dipatahkan. 

It’s really difficult to stop reading. I can understand why people calling it masterpiece among other works. 

Nadine

Telat tapi baru sekarang akhirnya bisa baca buku ini. Berlatar di Jepang, seorang detektif dari kepolisian mati-matian berusaha mencari kelemahan alibi dari pembunuhan kejahatan yang dibentuk secara sempurna — penuh dengan celah namun tidak bisa dipatahkan. 

It’s really difficult to stop reading. I can understand why people calling it masterpiece among other works. 

I'm not the biggest fan of crime fiction, and picked this up in a charity shop  but it's brilliant! 

Mario Menti 

Sade A

❤
*Heavy Sigh*
I can't wrap my head around the supposed brilliance of this book. 
More like the police detective in this book is honestly proper clueless about apprehending criminals that don't leave clues of their guilt like bread crumbs for him to easily clue up on.
Honestly should have just written Yukawa in as the detective and saved readers the trouble. 

(view spoiler)[Also can i just say fuck that Yasuko woman and her daughter. 
Should have spoken up right from the start or just let Ishigami handle it. For that matter why tf did he even confess? Far as i could see all they had was conjecture, zero solid proof and even worse zilch evidence to actually pin either Yasuko or Ishigami. 
So like why did everyone just decide to fuck themselves up like that? (hide spoiler)]

Ugh!!! Really upset with the direction the author decided to take this book in.

❤❤
All in all, an okay enough crime novel but honestly way below what i was expecting considering all the praise this book has.

Totally random, but i wondered as i read this book, if it lost something of its magic with the translation to English.

Sinuo Guo

Still trying to pick up my jaw off the floor.

It was an interesting read. I have so much fun and so much brainstorming throughout the story. I think the premise was not quite the classic whodunit mystery because the perpetrator had been introduced early on. It tells about a story to camouflage a murder that has took place with airtight alibi. But beneath those alibis, dark truth showed up. The story revolved around battle of wits and intelligence, love, friendship, and sacrifice. The author was so subtle in the art of mislead that I think most reader like me didn't even know that we got farther away from the answers the more we try to think. We are the cops who were being lured into the trap set by Ishigami. The plot and the flow of the suspense is pretty enjoyable to follow. It wasn't too hard of a reading despite the complexity of the plot. I must say it was quite refreshing.

Gilbert

Rowan Myers

** spoiler alert **
           This book was ... okay. It reminded me a bit of Out with a dash of Ring dashed in.

I think, however, that it focused so hard on the minute details of the crime that it overlooked the sweeping arc. I guessed the "shock ending" from the get-go.

It's not to say this isn't good, per se, it's just that I get the feeling I've read it before.

It should also be stylistically noted that the books I've read in the thriller genre that are translated from Japanese frequently have the minimalist, no frills style demonstrated here.

Overall: I saw the cover blurb that said this was the Japanese Stieg Larsson. Yeah. I buy that. I felt the same way about the Dragon Tattoo books as well. Go with that - if you liked those, you'll like this. If you were underwhelmed by those, same here.

Fraser Simons

2.5 rounded up

A fun twist shores up an otherwise lack of interesting prose and cardboard characters. Very much focused solely on the plot, which sometimes make progress ponderous. As a piece of commercial genre fiction though, it stands up because of the more novel pieces integrated here.