Salvation of a Saint

Starred review from August 6, 2012
Howdunit, rather than whodunit, appears to be the central question of Edgar-finalist Higashino’s brilliant second mystery featuring Tokyo police detective Manabu Yukawa (after 2011’s The Devotion of Suspect X). After Yoshitaka Mashiba tells his wife, Ayane, that their short marriage is over because she hasn’t become pregnant, Ayane thinks about “the white powder hidden in a sealed plastic bag” and decides that her husband has to die, adding a cryptic “too.” When Ayane leaves town to tend to an ailing parent, her protégé, who’s also her husband’s mistress, stops by to find Mashiba dead of what turns out to be arsenic poisoning. How did the poison enter the victim’s system at a time when the obvious suspect, the scorned wife, was away? While readers of classic mysteries will be delighted with the elegant solution, the book will also appeal to fans of procedurals that carefully develop the relationships among the investigative team members. Agent: Anna Stein, Aitken Alexander Associates.

September 1, 2012
A Tokyo CEO's determination to run his marriage as a business is ended by a dose of arsenous acid. Information technology company president Yoshitaka Mashiba knows what he wants, and what he wants is a child. If his wife Ayane, a noted patchwork quilter, can't give him one after a year of marriage, he's prepared to divorce her and move on to some likelier candidate. But his plans are thwarted when someone poisons his coffee during a weekend when Ayane is conveniently away in Sapporo. Is the killer Hiromi Wakayama, the apprentice quilter whom Yoshitaka had taken as his mistress? She seems the last person in the world who'd poison her lover, but she was clearly the only person present when he died. Detective Kusanagi, of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, searches in vain for other suspects, but the real question this claustrophobic mystery poses isn't whodunit but how it happened--how and when the poison got into Yoshitaka's coffee cup without leaving traces anywhere else, not even in Hiromi's cup. For better or worse, Kusanagi (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2011) finds that every time he and his junior colleagues eliminate each possible way some absent party could have doctored Yoshitaka's coffee, consulting physicist Manabu Yukawa, aka Detective Galileo, comes up with some alternative scenario that's even more preposterous. A retro puzzler that recalls Anthony Berkeley's classic The Poisoned Chocolates Case in its structure: a hyperextended short story whose complications keep unfolding and proliferating till it's grown to novel length.

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Starred review from September 15, 2012

A man is found poisoned to death in his home a few days after he announced to his wife his desire for them to separate. Tokyo detective Kusanagi and his partner begin to round up the suspects, with the jilted wife as the leading contender. Was it the girlfriend, the business associate, or a random act of violence? The solution eludes the investigators until physics professor Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, is introduced to the case. But even his brilliant mind can't seem to connect all the pieces. VERDICT This intricate, sophisticated story will pique the interest of the most avid mystery readers, especially those who loved the author's acclaimed The Devotion of Suspect X. With this new book, Higashino has taken the art and craft of mystery writing to a new level of excellence. [See Prepub Alert, 7/12.]--Ron Samul, New London, CT

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2012
Edgar-nominee Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2011) offers an audacious premise as, in the opening pages, he all but tells us that Ayane Mita is going to poison her husband, Yoshitaka Mashiba. Then Yoshitaka is, indeed, poisoned via arsenic in his coffee. However, Ayane is out of town and well alibied. As mismatched detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi pursue the truth, aided by the prickly, exacting professor Yukawa, we become more and more certain Ayane did itbut, like the detectives, we can't possibly imagine how it could ever be proved. Has she committed the perfect crime? Despite the Toyko setting, Higashino isn't interested in atmosphere, and he's not really interested in plumbing the depths of the characters' emotional lives, either. Instead, this plays out in a series of interviews, reinterviews, and hypothetical conversations that focus on the smallest nuances of evidence and motive. Readers who prefer guns-drawn action won't respond, but those who thrill to the cerebral pleasures of deduction will drink it right down . . . keeping a wary eye on their own cups of coffee.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)