Keigo Higashino; The Devotion of Suspect X

The story begins with Yasuka being harassed by her ex-husband, Togashi. Yasuka used to work as a hostess in a nightclub, but she and her daughter Misato moved away after she divorced him. Now the still-beautiful Yasuka works in the Benten-tei sandwich shop. But alas, Togashi has somehow tracked her down. At Yasuka's apartment, Togashi alternately pleads and threatens until she gives him some yen to finally go away. On his way out, Togashi sneers that he will be back, because Yasuka always gives into him. In anger, Misato strikes Togashi and he attacks her. In the struggle to save her daughter, Yasuka ends up killing Togashi.

Living quietly in the next-door apartment is Ishigami, a high school math teacher who is actually a problem-solving genius. Ishigami hears the commotion in Yasuka's apartment and comes by to see what the problem is. When he sees Togashi's dead body, Ishigami offers to fix the problem so Yasuka can literally get away with murder. He concocts a scheme that will befuddle the police and let Yasuka and Misato carry on with their lives.

A dead body is discovered near Old Edogawa River. Two detectives are assigned to the case: Kusanagi and Kishitani. Kusanagi is the more experienced of the two. The cops determine that the dead man must be Togashi, even though the face was smashed into an unrecognizable mess and the fingertips had been burned off. (A nearby bicycle has fingerprints on the handlebars). Kishitani is convince immediately that Yasuka is innocent, but Kusanagi is not so sure.

Kusanagi has a friend who attended Imperial University with him - a physicist named Yukawa. Yukawa is known for his brilliant, out-of-the-box thinking. Kusanagi has come to him in the past with puzzling crimes, and Yukawa has offered insights that solved some tough cases. Kusanagi calls Yukawa "Detective Galileo" for his brilliant solutions. But when he talks about the puzzling Togashi murder, Yukawa is stunned to discover that the next-door neighbor of Yasuka is Ishigami, who also attended Imperial University with him. They were friends while at school, though they had gone their separate ways post-graduation. If anything, Ishigami is even smarter than Yasuka. The plot involves Yasuka and Kusanagi trying to figure out the crime versus the careful planning by Ishigami.

*** Warning - Spoilers below ***

About halfway through this novel, I took a long walk and then spent an hour at the gym, so I had time to think about what was going on. I concluded that the reason Higashino had mentioned Ishigami's walk past the homeless people each morning was because that was crucial to the plot. I correctly guessed that the dead body was not that of Togashi, but of one of the homeless folks (it turned out to be Homeless Engineer). I thought that Ishigami's scheme was to frame Togashi for murder. The police would find evidence that Homeless Engineer had been in Togashi's apartment, and now Togashi was missing and a man was found murdered. The police would conclude that Togashi was on the run and a nationwide search would begin for him. Of course, Togashi would never be found because Ishigami had disposed of his body. Thus, Yasuka and Misato would escape justice.

Turns out I was only half right. If Ishigami had planned all along to confess to the murder, why did he wait so long before doing so? Why not simply drag the body into his own apartment and call the police? No need for this elaborate planning, no need to actually kill Homeless Engineer.

When Ishigami surprisingly confessed, I thought it was because he wanted endless quiet hours undisturbed in his jail cell so that he could work on math problems.

Title:

The Devotion of Suspect X

Author:

Keigo Higashino

Category:

Mystery / Thriller

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

March 10, 2026