Yasuko lives with her 
daughter leading a quiet live between work and home. The times living in a difficult marriage were over, or so she thought until out of the blue her ex-husband appears.
A moment of fear and confusion end with her ex-husband’s death. Yasuko thinks to turn herself in when Ishigami her neighbour comes with a solution.
“Sometimes, all you had to do was exist in order to be someone’s saviour”.
You know who the murderer is from the beginning of the story, you know when it happened, and why as well. Then, what is all this story about?
It is an intelligent thriller that brings you through an impossible situation till the amazing end.
The whole plot directs your thoughts across a story that become a continuous challenge to your logic and your imagination, in spite of your previous knowledge of other books of this genre.
“Trust me. Logical thinking will get us through this”
Well, not always and not so easily. At least with this story.
The main characters are introduced in a way that you quickly get their importance and role in the narration, and are as follows:
Yasuko Hanaoka, a middle aged woman, ex-hostess in a nightclub, and now working in a take-away shop.
Misato, student and Yasuko’s daughter.
Ishigami, a mathematician high-school teacher and neighbour of Yasuko and Misato.
Detective Kusanagi, in charge of the murder investigation.
Manabu Yukawa, Assistant professor at the University and old friend of Ishigami when they were students.
The two most interesting characters are clearly Ishigami and Yukawa and their way of thinking and facing the problems no matter what kind.
Some of their analysis left me more than surprised, delighted by his crushing logic, considering always the smallest details in every situation.
With these two characters, the writer gives us a lot of clues along the entire book. But I doubt that someone could find it easy to understand these clues until the very end of the book.
“Murder is murder. Everything else is just details.”
This sentence is almost at the beginning of the book and allows us to know the base of the plot.
The statement is, of course, true, but the details can change completely depending on what kind of murder has been committed.
It is a book that will catch the fans of the genre for its originality, and perhaps get new followers thanks to its originality.
Keigo Higashino
Born in Osaka in 1958. He graduated from Osaka Prefectural University, where he majored in electrical engineering. He wrote novels while working as an engineer, and made his debut as a novelist in 1985 with After School, which won him the Edogawa Rampo Award. As a full-time writer, he won the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award for Himitsu in 1999. The novel earned a good reputation, was made into a movie starring Ryoko Hirosue, and is currently being developed for a remake by Luc Besson. Higashino won the prestigious Naoki Award for Devotion of Suspect X in 2005. Among other works by him, g@me, Lakeside (Shinji Aoyama’s Lakeside Murder Case) and Henshin received movie adaptations. Most recently, Byakuyako (with Takayuki Yamada) was televised.
The hand of good fortune 