Salvation Of A Saint By Keigo Higashino

Having enjoyed Keigo Higashino”s “The Devotion of Suspect X “, I did not hesitate to buy his second novel “The Salvation of A Saint” when I saw it in Popular Bookstore a couple of weeks ago. Once I began reading it, I was once again hooked and despite having not much free time, I managed to finish it in a couple of sittings.

Salvation of a Saint is Keigo Higashino is a beautifully plotted crime novel filled with twists and surprises. Unlike a lot of whodunit murder stories where the murderers are only revealed towards the end of the stories, you will know who is the murderer by the end of the first chapter of “Salvation of A Saint.” But it will require you to read more than 300 pages of the book before you can find out how the victim was murdered.

Yoshitaka Mashiba, who was about to leave his marriage and his beautiful wife Ayane, is found dead with a cup of spilled coffee next to him. His distraught mistress finds his body in his Tokyo home. The only traces of poison are in the coffee grounds and the cup. Nothing suggests a forced entry and he was alone at the time of death. Was this a suicide or the perfect crime?

The mistress has a watertight alibi so the most logical suspect and the one person with a motive is Ayane – except that she was hundreds of miles away visiting her parents in Hokkaido when he was murdered. So she's out.

Or is she?

The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with Ayane and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. He hopes to solve the case without the help of college friend and genius Professor Manabu Yukawa (aka Detective Galileo) who has informally helped him in many cases in the past. In the last investigation, their friendship became strained and now both steer clear of one another.

Kusanagi’s feisty female assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. Knowing that Kusanagi has fallen for prime suspect Ayane, Utsumi does what her boss has done for years when stymied—she calls upon Professor Manabu Yukawa.

It’s a monumental task to continue the legacy of bestseller as successful as Devotion of Suspect X. Salvation of A Saint is a gripping read but I feel that it fails to match Devotion of Suspect X.