Rating: 8/10
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The book The Devotion of Suspect X is a reference to the film Janee Jaan that I once watched. A pretty good Indian thriller with plot twists and back and forth plots. Reading a film reference book, we will always be presented with story details that are sometimes considered unimportant to record to increase the duration.
Tells the story of a genius high school mathematics teacher named Tetsuya Ishigami with an unattractive appearance, who falls in love with his beautiful apartment neighbor, Yasuko Hanaoka. Not daring to start a conversation, for years their communication was limited to a formal greeting from a neighbor. In order to always meet his idol, Ishigami goes to Hanaoka's workplace almost every day to buy bento.
One day Hanaoka had misfortune, her ex-husband whom she had tried to escape from appeared at her place of work. The man had a bad habit of going on a spree. Hanaoka was sure the man wanted to ask for money from him, again. Hanaoka refused to meet and threw the man out, but the man threatened to look for his child. Finally, Hanaoka was forced to meet him secretly.
Not satisfied with just meeting in a cafe and not getting what he wanted, the ex-husband came to Hanoka's apartment, he threatened him and was forced to enter. In the house, the man continued to act out even though he had been given money. Before leaving because he was kicked out, the man said bad things, as a result of which, without Hanaoka realizing it, his daughter Misato ran towards the man and hit him on the head with a ceramic vase.
Shocked and angry, the man raged at Misato, threw her down and then put her on top of her body while grabbing her hair and hitting Misato while saying "I'll kill you!". Hanaoka was stunned, if left too long Misato could die. Hanaoka immediately looked for anything around him and found a room heating cable. Immediately wrapped the cable around the man's neck and pulled hard.
The man struggled against the strangulation of the cable wrapped around his neck. He was almost able to get free because Hanaoka's strength wasn't very strong, until Misato, who was free, helped his mother by pinning the man down so he couldn't move freely. The struggle went on for a long time until the man fell limp. Misato shouted at her mother to stop pulling the cable because the man was dead.
Both mother and child were silent, unaware of what they had done. They wonder whether they should surrender themselves to the police? In the confusion there was a knock on the front door. They immediately hid what had happened, then Hanaoka opened the door which turned out to be knocked by Ishigami. "Is there any problem?" Ishigami asked, to which Hanaoka of course answered No. Ishigami returned to his room.
After Ishigami left, Mother and Son continued to discuss whether they should confess or hide their crimes. If they really wanted to cover it up, they were confused about how they would take care of the man's body. Finally, when the mother wanted to call the police to confess, their house phone rang. When he picked up the caller said, "Hello, this is Ishigami again. Do you want to report the incident to the police? If not, I think it's difficult for a woman to hide a corpse alone."
Furthermore, in this 320-page book, Keigo Higashino tells a flexible mystery story, with many plots of a battle of wits between the genius Ishigami and the police detectives. Ishigami's goal is clear, to protect the woman he loves from being arrested by the police, and he is ready to do anything for that.