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This was a very good Higashino novel, probably one of my favourite novels from him.
A woman is murdered in a business district in Tokyo. At the beginning, the story is told in the form of small vignettes, told from the perspective of shop-owners near the area who hear about the murder second hand. They are surprised when a police officer drops in repeatedly to make enquiries about seemingly unimportant details. But through these small discoveries, unimportant clues are explained away while the accurate picture of the case is built up.
Plotwise, the motive for the murder is fairly perfunctory, but in a way that lends to the verisimilitude; this seems like a murder that can happen in real life. The murderer had no watertight alibi, no grand plan for escape, and the only way they avoid detection is because their connection to the woman is obscure. Yet the way that Higashino structures the novel makes the eventual connection to the murderer natural and logical.
The thread running through the novel was family, and specifically how family seems to generate conflict in different ways. These relations and emotions are explored tenderly. And the author also convincingly shows how family can lead one to kill.
A woman is murdered in a business district in Tokyo. At the beginning, the story is told in the form of small vignettes, told from the perspective of shop-owners near the area who hear about the murder second hand. They are surprised when a police officer drops in repeatedly to make enquiries about seemingly unimportant details. But through these small discoveries, unimportant clues are explained away while the accurate picture of the case is built up.
Plotwise, the motive for the murder is fairly perfunctory, but in a way that lends to the verisimilitude; this seems like a murder that can happen in real life. The murderer had no watertight alibi, no grand plan for escape, and the only way they avoid detection is because their connection to the woman is obscure. Yet the way that Higashino structures the novel makes the eventual connection to the murderer natural and logical.
The thread running through the novel was family, and specifically how family seems to generate conflict in different ways. These relations and emotions are explored tenderly. And the author also convincingly shows how family can lead one to kill.