The Devotion of Suspect X

The devotion of suspect X

I don't think I've ever cried for a line before. I was weeping. This really tugged me. 

"Confinement was like a limitless garden of paradise for him".

joyce 

I don't think I've ever cried for a line before. I was weeping. This really tugged me. 

"Confinement was like a limitless garden of paradise for him".

Jason Lo

zainab

its such a clever book. higashino has such a way of writing an easily followable complex murder mystery. im in love with his stories but this one in particular for its “devotion” (read: obsession) and how a man had planned everything to the t as a result of his obsession... the more i think about it the crazier it is

** spoiler alert **
           A gripping read that's cleverly written - from the way the crime is concealed, to the way it's solved. The mathematical references and riddles all pose thought-provoking questions whose answers are pivotal in directing the investigation to uncovering the truth. Ishigamo, the mathematician and Yukawa, the physicist, are old classmates and make incredibly intriguing characters. When the two reunite, you get to appreciate their ability to predict each other's thoughts/actions as well as their intellectual cut-and-thrust. The ending wasn't entirely surprising, I felt it missed its potential to be. It seemed unrealistic but that's a question of whether you believe true altruism exists or that humans are inherently motivated by self-interest.

Prashanth Srivatsa

A brilliant, reverse whodunit that culminates in a jaw-dropping final page. Higashino's understanding of procedurals and the subsequent plotting of the battle of wits between the suspect and the detectives will make you abandon important tasks for the sake of wrapping up this insane puzzle. Through distractions crafted in the imagery of a Kaiser Soze or some such masterminds, Higashino lures you into unsuspecting traps with ease and leaves you with unexpected revelations.

TYLER

i picked up this novel bc i stumbled upon the quote “sometimes, all you had to do was exist in order to be someone’s savior” and was doubly intrigued when i saw that the source was a mystery novel. but what i found here was a story with the mystery plot almost secondary to who the characters were. the primary crime happens in the first few scenes, and we know exactly who the players involved are and what they did. at least until we don’t, and in this balancing act, higashino keigo is so careful and patient about what he reveals. i suppose that’s how i think of this particular mystery: a balancing act, not a puzzle piece. the parts were all there from the very beginning if you let yourself notice them. the little incongruences, the parts that made you flip a page back or squint at a date or a forensic detail. there was no grand magic trick. the details and logistics really were simpler than you might want it to be, but the novel itself acknowledges and even embraces this simplicity. what mattered more to it and to me was what the reveal meant for our characters moving forward, and this part, the novel worked harder to earn than any riddle. it skims a light but purposeful fingertip over people at different corners of society: who they are, what they’ve survived, how they’re ignored, what they remain ignorant to. maybe by virtue of being young high school students, or of being homeless and left neglected in the fringes of their own community, or of being lonely, of wanting to be wanted, of wanting to understand a friend.

i do find that there’s a certain emotional detachment associated with cerebral archetypes, particularly ones in stem, and when you work with characters like that, the authorial instinct is to hand them recognizable emotions to act out so that readers understand they are capable of it, or at least give them some kind of movement towards realizing that traditional manifestations of feelings are a necessary part of human existence. which of course they are—but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone feels feelings the same expected external way. there are ways to earn empathy without it being a proxy to sympathy, and while there were sections in 

ah, they want me to feel sorry for ishigami and i just can’t give them that.

in the end, i mostly just understood him. i didn’t agree with his choices, nor was i convinced of any moral purity in his motivations, but i understood him. i understood his earnest, almost innocent love for math, so pure i also understood why it governed how he saw and felt about the rest of the world. i understood how content he was to be left to his devices, how much he’d rather shun the daily tedious labours of being a person if it would give him time to devote to just solving impossible math problems, but how even solitude can become meaningless no matter how rich your mental world might be. i understood yukawa, too, in how he’d gravitated back to ishigami’s side at the first opportunity available. i understood his grief and heartbreak as he pieced things together bc it would mean losing one of the few true equals he had in the world, intellectually hence emotionally. here were two people who understood the world in very specific ways and felt for it through those ways, and they recognized that in each other. it’s a shame, that this is how that recognition had to culminate.   

but that doesn’t negate how refreshing it is to witness how higashino digs into the humanity that of course still arises out of even a mind-first relationship with the world. at the very least, the mystery here explores those implications in ways that many detective-type mystery novels fail to. sherlock holmes suffers from portrayals of being emotionless if not outright named a sociopath, even though i’d argue often curiosity and puzzle-piecing is the first love language some people learn to find and form in the world. this is true for both ishigami & yukawa in 

, and it’s even the main thesis that the novel and its mystery hinges upon. what does devotion look like, for better or for worse, when your relationship with the world is defined by your ideas and your fixations and the love that inevitably forms from this dynamic? what does companionship look like, in a world you’ve accepted solitude from as a choice but also as a default? what form does an antidote to loneliness take, when real life itself can at times be an intrusion, or is something that has rejected you, or something that you don’t think you can ever claim again bearing the weight of what you know?   

not sure yet how i feel about the final scene. a part of me wishes it was different, but i also don’t know 

 it could have been different. i don’t even know how i would want it to be different. in the end, all i know is that this novel earned my heart enough to break it, if a little quietly, a little wearily.

i picked up this novel bc i stumbled upon the quote “sometimes, all you had to do was exist in order to be someone’s savior” and was doubly intrigued when i saw that the source was a mystery novel. but what i found here was a story with the mystery plot almost secondary to who the characters were. the primary crime happens in the first few scenes, and we know exactly who the players involved are and what they did. at least until we don’t, and in this balancing act, higashino keigo is so careful and patient about what he reveals. i suppose that’s how i think of this particular mystery: a balancing act, not a puzzle piece. the parts were all there from the very beginning if you let yourself notice them. the little incongruences, the parts that made you flip a page back or squint at a date or a forensic detail. there was no grand magic trick. the details and logistics really were simpler than you might want it to be, but the novel itself acknowledges and even embraces this simplicity. what mattered more to it and to me was what the reveal meant for our characters moving forward, and this part, the novel worked harder to earn than any riddle. it skims a light but purposeful fingertip over people at different corners of society: who they are, what they’ve survived, how they’re ignored, what they remain ignorant to. maybe by virtue of being young high school students, or of being homeless and left neglected in the fringes of their own community, or of being lonely, of wanting to be wanted, of wanting to understand a friend.

i do find that there’s a certain emotional detachment associated with cerebral archetypes, particularly ones in stem, and when you work with characters like that, the authorial instinct is to hand them recognizable emotions to act out so that readers understand they are capable of it, or at least give them some kind of movement towards realizing that traditional manifestations of feelings are a necessary part of human existence. which of course they are—but that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone feels feelings the same expected external way. there are ways to earn empathy without it being a proxy to sympathy, and while there were sections in suspect x where i thought, ah, they want me to feel sorry for ishigami and i just can’t give them that. sorry. in the end, i mostly just understood him. i didn’t agree with his choices, nor was i convinced of any moral purity in his motivations, but i understood him. i understood his earnest, almost innocent love for math, so pure i also understood why it governed how he saw and felt about the rest of the world. i understood how content he was to be left to his devices, how much he’d rather shun the daily tedious labours of being a person if it would give him time to devote to just solving impossible math problems, but how even solitude can become meaningless no matter how rich your mental world might be. i understood yukawa, too, in how he’d gravitated back to ishigami’s side at the first opportunity available. i understood his grief and heartbreak as he pieced things together bc it would mean losing one of the few true equals he had in the world, intellectually hence emotionally. here were two people who understood the world in very specific ways and felt for it through those ways, and they recognized that in each other. it’s a shame, that this is how that recognition had to culminate.   

but that doesn’t negate how refreshing it is to witness how higashino digs into the humanity that of course still arises out of even a mind-first relationship with the world. at the very least, the mystery here explores those implications in ways that many detective-type mystery novels fail to. sherlock holmes suffers from portrayals of being emotionless if not outright named a sociopath, even though i’d argue often curiosity and puzzle-piecing is the first love language some people learn to find and form in the world. this is true for both ishigami & yukawa in suspect x, and it’s even the main thesis that the novel and its mystery hinges upon. what does devotion look like, for better or for worse, when your relationship with the world is defined by your ideas and your fixations and the love that inevitably forms from this dynamic? what does companionship look like, in a world you’ve accepted solitude from as a choice but also as a default? what form does an antidote to loneliness take, when real life itself can at times be an intrusion, or is something that has rejected you, or something that you don’t think you can ever claim again bearing the weight of what you know?   

not sure yet how i feel about the final scene. a part of me wishes it was different, but i also don’t know if it could have been different. i don’t even know how i would want it to be different. in the end, all i know is that this novel earned my heart enough to break it, if a little quietly, a little wearily.

jiaqi kang

priya

3.5 stars for a standard murder mystery novel, until the twist right at the end.


  CW: 
  (view spoiler)[off page domestic violence, murder by strangulation, mention of suicide attempt, precanon suicide attempt (hide spoiler)]


the novel starts off with Yasuko’s ex-husband, Togashi, tracking down Yasuko to her work at a bento place. Togashi harasses Yasuko until she agrees to meet him after work, in another attempt to get back to together five years after their divorce. Yasuko assertively turns Togashi down, but he somehow finds where she lives and confronts Yasuko at her apartment. 

Togashi attempts to bully Yasuko into giving him money and threatens to harm her daughter, Misato. before either of them get hurt, Yasuko and Misato manage to kill Togashi. but now, they’re left with a dead body and a police investigation in the immediate future. this is where Ishigami, their neighbour, steps in and tries to help Yasuko avoid the suspicion of the detectives. 

it’s very hard to review The Devotion of Suspect X without spoiling the reveal. it really shocked me! 

it’s worth reading if you have a few hours, as it’s a short and fast paced novel.

The Devotion of Suspect X

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