I almost did not finish this one. The prose is repetitive and uninspiring, the characters are flat and barely distinguishable, making the entire experience feel like watching the pilot of a cop show from the 1980s that did not get picked up. The only reasons I pushed on to the end were that this was a book club pick and there was just enough suspense that I had to see what the author had cooked up as the final solution.

That final twist is the only thing that bumped this from one star to two. It's a pretty good twist. But then the author goes and ruins it with a denouement full of melodrama. Maybe something was lost in translation. ( )

I liked reading about Japan, and the atmosphere of the hardened detectives, but I didn't like that the killer is revealed from the first chapter. I guess it's just not what I'm used to from reading Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. The story is more about working out how they did it rather than who did it. Or about how the detectives figure out the whole plot. Couple of good twists near the end, actually, but overall not so satisfying. Definitely not, as the cover proudly proclaims, as good as Stieg Larsson.

There were some places where I could tell the translation was stilted - particularly when translating 'irasshaimase' or 'tadaima', ritualized Japanese greetings which don't have a natural translation into English except for "Hello" or "Hey", so it sticks out when they're translated as "welcome" or "I'm home!". I found myself wondering what the original would have said. My Japanese isn't quite good enough to read a whole book, though.

But Higashino is well-liked here, so when asked I usually say it was fine. ( )

Yasuko is a single mother who works in a lunch shop. She used to work at a hostess club but has since left that life behind - along with her abusive ex-husband, Togashi. Unfortunately, Togashi manages to track her down once again, and this time things escalate to the point that Yasuko strangles him to death in an effort to protect herself and Misato, her teen daughter. Yasuko is still grappling with what she's done when her next door neighbor, a math teacher named Ishigami, stops by and calmly offers to help.

Ishigami is a quiet and solitary man whose only interest in life is mathematics...and Yasuko. He had gotten into the habit of stopping by her workplace to buy lunch, just to see her. He has no illusions that she might ever feel the same about him. When he hears the commotion in her apartment, he immediately offers to help. He isn't shocked by what's happened - his only concern is the problem presented by Togashi's death, and Yasuko and Misato's safety. He'll do anything to help them, so he takes care of literally everything, disposing of Togashi's body and laying out exactly what Yasuko and Misato must do in order to deal the police's inevitable suspicion.

The one thing Ishigami doesn't take into account is that the police will involve Yukawa, a physicist who's the only person he's ever met whose intellect is a match for his own.

This was technically a reread - my first time through this story was via a library audiobook back in 2018. I could remember some of the mystery's solution, but I forgot key pieces. As a result, my reread almost felt like a first read. The ending was just as much of a gut punch this time around as it was in 2018.

The reader knows everything about the murder right from the start - the big mystery isn't whodunnit, but "how are they managing to hide it?" There's lots of evidence, although readers can see some of Ishigami's efforts to hide what really happened. Yasuko and Misato both have an alibi, but it's shaky enough that the police keep poking at it. So why can't they find any of the holes in their story that surely must be there?

I remembered enough of Ishigami's trick to have some idea of what to look out for, but I had forgotten just how far he was willing to go. This mystery had some masterful misdirection, and yet it somehow never felt as though the author cheated. This was at least in part due to the sort of character Ishigami was - coldly logical, and yet for some reason willing to do something as apparently illogical as covering up a murder for a woman who barely knew he existed. Sure, he was interested in her, but readers had ample opportunities to see that Ishigami wasn't the sort of person to be ruled by his emotions. The overall effect was a fascinating puzzle with a few ill-fitting pieces...up until Higashino laid the whole horrible and tragic thing out at the end.

This left me with complicated feelings. I read this for its tricky puzzle and somehow got blindsided by its surprise emotional aspects. Once Yasuko accepted Ishigami's help, there was really no good way for things to end. I felt terrible for everyone involved, and yet I think I'd have felt just as terrible, for different reasons, if things had turned out another way.

At any rate, this was definitely worth a reread. It's a shame that the next book in the series isn't nearly as good as this one.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

When Yasuko Hanakoa's abusive ex-husband shows up at her workplace, to say that she is not pleased is a major understatement. When he follows her home and makes threatening statements towards Yasuko and her teenage daughter, one thing leads to another, and the two women have a dead body to dispose of. Enter Ishigami, the shy mathematician from next door, who hears the commotion and quickly devises a plan to conceal the crime. However, not only the police, but an interested physicist named Dr. Manabu Yukawa (also known as Detective Galileo), are on the case. Who will prevail?

This is an interesting book because the reader goes in knowing who committed the murder and how, though they don't have all of the details of the cover-up. There are several twists and turns, especially at the ending. The reader comes to sympathize with Yasuko and Ishigami, hoping that their plan will carry them through. I felt that Yasuko didn't have much agency, and all of the characters felt somewhat distant -- possibly because of the translation? Anyhow, I enjoyed this and might read others by this author, but I'm not rushing out for the next one right away. ( )

Japanese thriller that is not so much a whodunit as a will-they-get-away-with-it?. It’s an intriguing setup, where a shy mathematician decides to help his neighbours cover up a crime. The cops happen to enlist the services of a physicist who is a former colleague of the mathematician. A tripartite dance of logic and deduction ensues. For most of its length. I though this book was pretty ordinary, but then Higashino pulls off a plot twist that leaves you gasping. Very good overall. ( )