The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino book review

 

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino book review

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino this book and I decided to pick it up. And oh man, you guys, I loved it. So the story starts off with you following this character named Yasuko who is a divorced single mom. 

And she thinks that she's finally gotten away from her ex-husband when all of a sudden he shows up at the restaurant that she works at. So every time he shows up he's like trying to get back together with her. 

And in the past she has just like given him money basically to make him go away. And this time she's like trying to get rid of him without like having to do that or like having any sort of association with him. 

But he's like threatening to go and find their daughter who's at school and like going and approaching her. He was an abusive ex-husband and all of this stuff and so she's been basically on the hideout for-- from him for a while. So she basically tells him to get lost. 

And then later that night he shows up at their apartment. And while in the apartment, the ex-husband ends up dead. So at this point they don't really know what to do.

Their neighbor from next door hears something sort of happening and comes over and realizes that there is a dead person in the apartment. And he decides that he is going to help them get rid of the body and make sure that everything is okay. He is someone who basically has a crush on his neighbor. 

And so he constructs sort of like the perfect alibi so that when the police discovered the body it'll never make sense that Yasuko or her daughter were anywhere near him when the death occurred. 

So that's the basic idea behind this. And then the story sort of unfolds from there with the police investigating the murder and trying to figure out what exactly happened. And the really great thing about this book is that the story also jumps forward in time from that point in the apartment. 

So as a reader you don't even know what exactly happened or what the neighbor did in order to create this perfect alibi. It's sort of like as the police are finding out clues, you as a reader are finding out clues.

And so this is like a really fantastic whodunit. When I had been hearing about this book, in my head I thought this was either like a slightly more noir book or one of like the darker Japanese crime thrillers type of books. I didn't realize it was a whodunit. 

And when I was reading this and I realized that fact, I became completely enthralled with this book. This book is like a puzzle for the reader to put together and I could not put it down. I read this whole thing in one day because I was just so intrigued by the puzzle. 

Like as you're finding out these little pieces of information about the woman and her daughter's alibi as well as the neighbor's alibi, you start to like see how things have been changed and you're trying to figure out what exactly happened after the murder happened in order for everything to fit so perfectly. 

And even just like as the reader like you know what the event is. Like you start off with the murder and so it's more about what is this puzzle that the neighbor has put together. 

And so you're seeing things and clues sort of laying about. And so as a reader you know like certain things are leading people off the wrong trail but then sometimes things are leading back to the wife and daughter and the neighbor. 

But then later you realize that that was done on purpose and it's just so well put together. It's so so fantastic. And the entire time you're sitting there not only wondering whether or not the mother and daughter are going to get caught but also just trying to figure out how exactly they're going to get away with it at the same time. Or how they've been able to get away with it for such a long time.

There's just like this really fantastic reveal at the end that I definitely did not see coming. And just even the way that everything wraps up in the end was such a surprise as well. Like it's been a while since I've been surprised by a mystery book. 

Especially these days a lot of books are like the psychological suspense books or just like these really purposefully twisty unreliable narrator sort of books. And while those aren't like bad by any means, if you read enough of them you can kind of see the patterns of them. And it's been a while since I feel like I've read like a true puzzle of a book. 

Like I feel like if you're someone who enjoys like classic whodunit like Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie or if you read like magpie murders last year and you really enjoyed that, not that it's written in the same style, but it's that same sort of puzzle sort of situation that personally I adore so much. 

That's like my favorite kind of mystery because that's sort of like the mysteries that I grew up reading. And I feel like it's hard to find true puzzle mystery books like that. So yeah, in the end I gave this book a 4 out of 5 stars. I loved it so much. 

And I found out when i shelved this on Goodreads that this is part of a series of books. So I'm hoping to pick up some of the others maybe later this year and seeing if they all have that same sort of whodunit formula to it or if they change. I don't know. If you've read this book or if you've read any of the other books in the series, definitely let me know how it compares to the others. 

But yeah, if you are someone who enjoys mysteries, like straightforward mysteries, if you enjoy whodunits, if you enjoy a good puzzle, definitely pick up this book. 

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 THANK YOU SO MUCH