Silent Parade

Two girls are murdered twenty years apart and the same man is a suspect in both cases. The first time he was found not guilty for lack of evidence. The second time he is released without being tried. Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi of Tokyo Homicide was a young detective on the case twenty years ago and now is leading the investigation of the latest case. So begins Silent Parade by Keigo Higashino in one of the best detective novels of the year.

The cases are maddeningly lacking in physical evidence and the suspect refuses to talk. The neighborhood where the second girl lives holds an annual street parade and singing competition that draws entrants from all over Tokyo and Japan. It is during this parade that the suspect dies under show more questionable circumstances. The popularity of the second victim, Saori Namiki, means that there is no shortage of suspects. Everyone seems, however, to have an airtight alibi. Kusanagi is a skilled investigator but he needs the assistance of his college friend, physics professor Manabu Yukawa, otherwise known as Detective Galileo, to help unravel this series of complex crimes.

Yukawa is eminently likable, but he houses a curiosity and thought process that rivals Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Highashino lays out a brilliant case with only the thinnest of threads to follow. It takes some brilliant speculation by Yukawa to point the police in the right direction, but each puzzle solved leads to another puzzle. It also highlights both the difficulty of solving crime absent confession as well as the dangers that overreliance on confessions holds.

Higashino spreads breadcrumbs throughout the narrative for readers to follow and theorize along the way. Even with all the clues, the story manages to introduce astonishing revelations which feel earned. Higashino has delivered a brilliant detective story, as well as a touching portrayal of a tight-knit community. It’s easy to see why he is one of the most popular novelists in Japan and has a growing English-language following as well. One of the best books of the year.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. show less

In Silent Parade, a man who seems to have gotten away with murder twice simply by refusing to say anything to the police turns up dead, and it's up to Detective Galileo to find out what happened. While at first the case seems to be outside his usual wheelhouse and Yukawa looks into it only as a favor to his friends on the force, naturally it turns out that the man was murdered through a strange method that requires Yukawa's scientific knowledge to unravel.

So far, so typical of the series -- but from that point, Silent Parade begins to deviate from the formula of previous entries, and it doesn't entirely work. The Detective Galileo books are usually not so much whodunnits as howcatchems, and in cases where the culprit is intended to be show more sympathetic, this is much to their advantage. The fact that the identity of the culprit is not really in doubt allows the writer to show the culprit's POV without resorting to the cheap trick of "they just happen to never think about the fact that they're the murderer." (Of course, some details are still concealed from the reader, but it's easier to suspend disbelief for "some details" than "the entire fact that this person just killed someone.") The access to the character's POV increases the reader's investment in the character and creates a compelling tension in which the reader simultaneously wonders how Yukawa will unravel this one and sort of hopes that he won't. (Indeed, this book reveals that Yukawa himself regrets convincing the culprit to come clean in The Devotion of Suspect X.)

Silent Parade's central murder was carried off by a group of people working together, and the book attempts to keep the reader guessing about who exactly was involved, to what extent they were involved, and who actually did the killing. In all cases except one, this means that the reader gets little to no insight into their thoughts until their role in the murder has been established. (The one exception is likely a sort of fakeout -- the character looks like they're getting the same treatment that the culprit has in previous books so that it's a surprise to learn their role in the murder was very minor.) And then, of course, the large number of suspects and accessories to the murder means there just isn't as much time to spend exploring any particular one of them. In combination, these things made it hard to care very deeply about any of the characters, even though the reader is clearly supposed to.

The other departure is that most of the previous entries in the series have been built around a single major twist -- granted, many of these entries have been short stories, so they don't have much room for more than that, but so far this has been true even of the novels. Silent Parade, however, piles multiple twists on top of one another. This starts to strain credulity after a while, and in fact, the final twist contradicts the logic by which Yukawa deduced the previous twist, which is just sloppy. (In the vaguest possible terms, everyone thinks that Person A committed a murder, but Yukawa believes that A's actions in the aftermath would only make sense if they weren't the killer and therefore knew the evidence against them could only ever be circumstantial. Confronted with this, Person B breaks down and confesses that they did it... but then it turns out that the victim was still alive when B left the scene, and the final blow was dealt by A after all. So it wasn't impossible for conclusive evidence against A to exist, and A should have been well aware of that -- apparently they really were just so arrogant as to believe they couldn't be caught. Which means the entire chain of reasoning that led to the reveal of B's involvement was based on false premises and just kind of accidentally happened to hit on something close to the truth. The book never acknowledges this.)

All of that being said, I have a particular interest in the Japanese justice system and the ways that it is portrayed in fiction, and Silent Parade was interesting from that angle. In general, I've found that mainstream Japanese media is more likely than mainstream US media to acknowledge some of the problems with the system, even when police officers are the protagonists (although the problems are often attributed to a handful of bad actors, or else there's an attitude of "well, what can you do? That's just how it is"). And this aspect is particularly central in Silent Parade, which takes a bit of an unusual approach to the issue of overreliance on confessions: if most convictions rely on confessions, what happens when someone simply won't confess? Police and prosecutors, Silent Parade suggests, have no idea what to do with a suspect who won't cave to pressure. The murderer-turned-victim, in fact, learned this lesson from his father, a police officer who bragged about his ability to get confessions out of anyone.

Of course, in the end the highest good in this series is the revelation of the truth, and even if Yukawa is starting to have reservations about convincing people to turn themselves in, anyone who's supposed to be a good person ultimately does. And the major police characters are good people who are doing their best and were all set to doggedly pursue justice within the system had their plans not been interrupted by the murder. But it's interesting to me to see this sort of anxiety about what it means for the justice system to be so reliant on confessions play out from this angle, especially as it hasn't been a prominent theme in previous entries in the series. show less

Silent Parade is the latest North American release for award winning Japanese author Keigo Higashino. This is the fourth entry in his Detective Galileo Series - but you'll have no problem jumping into the story.
'Detective Galileo' is actually not a part of any police force. Instead, he is a physics professor with an incredibly quick mind. His deductive powers could be compared to Poirot's. His good friend, DCI Kusanagi with the Homicide Division of the Tokyo police has drawn on Professor Yukawa's skill set before.

Two young girls have been murdered decades apart. What they have in common is the suspect - and the investigator. DCI Kusangi worked the historical case and is determined to solve this latest.

There are many players in Silent show more Parade and I was appreciative of the list of characters at the beginning of the book. I liked the enigmatic style of Professor Yukawa and the dogged determination of DCI Kusanagi. The family of the missing girl were very well drawn. The supporting cast is detailed enough to make each of them a suspect.

Higashino's plotting is detailed, intricate and downright devious. Just when I thought had things figured out, he upended all my suppositions and the investigation headed in a different direction. This happened more than once - and I loved it! Higasino is a clever, clever writer.

I enjoyed learning more about everyday life, social mores and celebrations in and of the Japanese culture, as well as the legal system. Giles Murray was the translator and did a fantastic job. The prose never felt wooden or awkward at all. I enjoyed the pacing of the book as well - a slow burner that lets you become immersed in the tale.

I would absolutely read the next book from Higashino. show less

Apparently—and with good reason—Keigo Higashino is big in Japan. I am delighted to have crossed paths with Higashino and his "Detective Galileo." And that delight is significantly increased by knowing that there are three more Detective Galileo books I can start looking for now and that more may appear in the future.

The Detective Galileo of the title is not actually a detective. Manabu Yukawa is a professor of physics who happens to have friendships with several members of Tokyo's police. They turn to him as a sounding board from time to time, and he has a Holmesian ability to sniff out which details really matter in a case and where they lead. He'll ask a few question or suggest an inquiry and dead-end cases begin to seem show more solvable. Like the original Holmes he's formal and distant, a puzzle of a man, but his ethics and intelligence are complex and leave him with a surprisingly large circle of friends.

Silent Parade examines two similar murders separated by twenty years. The suspect in the first of these crimes was tried, but not convicted, because his refusal to respond to investigators' questions left prosecutors with only circumstantial evidence that the the jury found inadequate. He's now the leading suspect in the second crimes, again refuses to speak, and appears to be getting away with murder once more.

The victim this time is a young woman who, on the brink of launching a promising singing career, disappeared. Three years after that disappearance, her body has been identified, and an entire community—family, regulars at the family's restaurant, and the music professionals who were nurturing her career—are immensely frustrated that her killer may escape justice yet again. So, when the suspected murderer dies under unusual circumstances, new suspects abound.

The solution to this mystery is complicated and remains unclear until the final chapters of the book. When Yukawa unravels it from a distance, readers are genuinely surprised. If you like mysteries that are more than cozy, but not dripping in gore, and that keep you wondering to the very end, you'll want to spend time with Yukawa, the Galileo Detective.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. show less

'Kusanagi pointed at Yukawa with his fork. "When it comes to unraveling impossible crimes, you're the master. It's time for Detective Galileo to stand up."'

Two murders, years apart; one suspect whom the police are unable to convict for lack of hard evidence. Then, on the day of the neighbourhood annual street parade, the suspect is found dead. Was it murder? If so, how on earth did it happen? Amongst a whole host of suspects, mainly from the families of the two murdered girls, everyone seems to have an alibi. With the police stumped, Chief Inspector Kusanagi enlists the help of his old physicist friend Manabu Yukawa, whose powers of insight and remarkable intellect have helped the police department before.

Make no bones about it, show more Higashino crafts wonderfully complex novels, and this is another. Part one sets up the premise, and explores the deaths of the two girls some twenty years apart, introducing us to the cast of characters and their lives. Parts two and three develop very much into a study of police procedure, with the detectives interviewing everyone, getting nowhere and banging their heads against a brick wall. Even Yukawa's theories go awry at times. As the layers of lies are slowly peeled away, the ultimate truth is one that I for sure would never come close to guessing!

As ever with Higashino, this is a slow burner, a book that draws you in with its precise character explorations, long conversations and interviews, and a complex structure that develops the background stories of the two murders as they weave together. There is also an enormous amount of empathy for the characters, as they deal with the grief and loss of a family member going missing and then being found, years later, a victim of a horrible murder.

The well-rounded characters and the remarkable plotting and structure of this makes it stand head and shoulders above many of the crime books out there. Fantastic and worthy of 5 stars from me. show less

First things first: it was nice to meet the familiar characters again. Yukawa, Kusanagi, Utsumi. As the series progresses, the detectives are getting better and better at their jobs. This is shown very well. Kusanagi certainly knows how to interrogate a suspect! Yukawa is still the smartest person in any room, though.

I really liked the police procedural parts, and conversations between Yukawa and Kusanagi, Yukawa and Utsumi.

“What’s all this about? Come on, tell me.”
“It’s so blindingly obvious, I really shouldn’t need to.”

“You shouldn’t be the one to decide if your idea is stupid or not. And you certainly don’t want to rush to judgment about something being impossible. Buried inside a crazy idea, you can often find show more useful hints for solving problems. You should come out and say it, and see what a third party has to say.”

As for the mystery itself, there are two missing person cases that seem to be connected. There is grief, trauma, perseverance in the face of grief and dreams of revenge. The investigation proceeds, and the case becomes more and more convoluted. Reader: I understand what happened! Author: No, you don’t. Reader: Well, I understand now. Author: Trust me, you don’t. Reader: Oh. Now I know what happened. Author: You don’t, I told you!”

Putting the puzzle together is very interesting, but gets too convoluted. I lost track of all the characters who were not the detectives and wasn’t emotionally involved, except in the end – unlike other books by this author I had read. The story is very dark, but I was more interested in the solving of the mystery than in feeling things.

I think I am left with 3.7 stars rounded up to 4. Flawed Keigo Higashino is still better than many other things out there.

P.S. I am still planning to read everything by Keigo Higashino that had been published/will be published in English. show less

Saori Namiki went missing three years before her body was found in the ruins of a burned out ‘trash house’. What happened? And is there a connection between her case and another one from 23 years ago?
The one suspect, in both cases, remains steadfastly silent.

“We have a man on a murder charge, almost certainly guilty, who’s been released because of insufficient evidence, who then dies mysteriously during a parade that’s held only once a year.”

This was a riveting read, with lots of characters and lots of possibilities! I loved the connections with Agatha Christie! And I dare say that this is my favorite book in the series - so far!