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saltycorpse 's review for:
Journey Under the Midnight Sun
by Keigo Higashino
Hands down my favorite fiction novel I've read this year.
Though Higashino starts the story with a murder, it's not focused on the murder investigation, but rather characters and the interconnected details of what happens after. The 19 years the novel spans covers the late '70s into the early '90s, and if you're familiar with the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, you'll appreciate the era of the first personal computers, the release of Super Mario Brothers, and the black market for video games and software, and how it ties in with the Yakuza.
I can see many readers disliking the ending because it's rather ambiguous, but not in a lazy way. Higashino hints at things throughout the novel, dropping small details and partial information, and he trusts his reader is both intelligent enough and imaginative enough to figure it out. I'm sure on a re-reading I would notice far more than I did the first time around. I also like that it doesn't end with a ridiculous "murder confesses every detail of what they did and why they did it monologue," which is always absurd and in no way realistic.
Though Higashino starts the story with a murder, it's not focused on the murder investigation, but rather characters and the interconnected details of what happens after. The 19 years the novel spans covers the late '70s into the early '90s, and if you're familiar with the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, you'll appreciate the era of the first personal computers, the release of Super Mario Brothers, and the black market for video games and software, and how it ties in with the Yakuza.
I can see many readers disliking the ending because it's rather ambiguous, but not in a lazy way. Higashino hints at things throughout the novel, dropping small details and partial information, and he trusts his reader is both intelligent enough and imaginative enough to figure it out. I'm sure on a re-reading I would notice far more than I did the first time around. I also like that it doesn't end with a ridiculous "murder confesses every detail of what they did and why they did it monologue," which is always absurd and in no way realistic.