Wicked whodunit

Lead review

Japan’s highly successful mystery writer Keigo Higashino is out in translation again. Like many of his earlier books, this 2011 novel too has made it to the big screen.

And translator Alexander O Smith is back in 2016, bringing the Japanese author to his world audience; occasionally, the translated dialogue feels clunky, but it does not really matter. The book works, despite its quieter, less-frenetic pace as compared to Higashino’s earlier works. A Japanese whodunit still has its own unique flavour.

Essentially, the story relates the aftermath of a murder that happens in the genteel run-down resort of Hari Cove, a seaside retreat that now has a chance at development, thanks to the planned undersea mining operations — a project that has sharply divided the town. In fact, the initial pages deal with a conference that is being attended by people both for and against this ecologically sensitive project.

On the train to Hari Cove is the physicist Manabu Yukawa — also known to Tokyo police as ‘Detective Galileo’; the informal helper of difficult cases the physicist somehow stumbles into. His co-passenger is a young schoolboy Kyohei, on his way to a week’s stay at his uncle’s inn — where Yukawa soon lands up, post the first day’s noisy proceedings. Another conference attendee, later discovered to be a retired Tokyo cop Tsukahara, also makes it to the inn — but is not a guest for long. The very first evening, after a bedtime walk, the man goes missing... and soon the cliff-edge ‘accident’ is being termed a murder, a case of carbon monoxide poisoning, rather than a fatal fall.

The inn is run by a couple and their grown-up daughter Narumi, ‘unofficial spokesperson for the sea near Hari Cove’. The initial chapters find Narumi arguing with Yukawa, who has been brought in by the mining consortium to allay the fears of the ecological activists. Yukawa, a neutral observer of the project, explains to Narumi that his attempt is to explain the low ecological and financial cost of electromagnetic surveying as against drilling holes into the seabed.

There is thus lots of scientific explanation and experimentation on offer through a book that is basically a murder mystery. It’s all tied up to the plot, of course. The mildly eccentric physicist is a temporary science tutor, companion and friend to the solitary, sensitive and precociously perceptive Kyohei, who obviously plays his own role in the whole affair, unknown even to himself. The local police, the Tokyo police unit, the detective pair in Tokyo, their friend and associate Yukawa at Hari Cove — all get busy trying to solve the mystery of a retired Tokyo cop getting killed in a sleepy far-off seaside village.

It turns out that the key lies in the past, in Tokyo, when some of the protagonists were younger. Many unknown people are questioned, dots connected, and a pattern emerges: the genteel tale wakes up, as the quiet Hari Cove residents start getting uncomfortable. An old man in a Tokyo hospice is interviewed, surprise discoveries are made, and the alert reader gets an inkling that calm can be deceiving.

Higashino is often termed the Japanese Stieg Larsson. But somehow, I was reminded of the English countryside mysteries of Agatha Christie and Ruth Randell.

As revelations emerge, old and new crimes are solved, and the reader closes the book feeling empathetic towards a lonely lad who is going to grow up and understand certain uncomfortable truths, all thanks to a protective childhood friend.
Characterisation and mood form the bedrock of this Higashino mystery that’s a tad languid in its pace as compared to his most popular works like The Devotion of Suspect X (turned into a successful film that saw many versions in India, viz the various avatars of Drishyam).

Indeed, character delineation, rather than action, is used to steer the tale. To me, the best scenes featured the professor playing science and mind games with his young companion, treating him gently, yet maturely  like an adult. I also loved the feisty Narumi’s interactions with Yukawa, who at one point asks, “Is the ocean such a fragile thing that it needs our protection?”

I liked the book but I do have a quibble  — the confusing profusion of police personnel with names that need recall and consequent back-checking.

This may not be a typical Keigo Higashino thriller, yet, I would recommend it as an introduction to the Japanese mystery genre. My reasons: it is a fairly good introduction to Japanese cultural norms; there is little obvious violence; one gets some practical life lessons through the scientist character — and finally, importantly, it helps one understand that quiet law-abiding citizens may yet be human enough to do whatever it takes to protect a loved one from danger. Now that’s what I call a cautionary tale. Worth a read.

A Midsummer’s Equation
Keigo Higashino
Little, Brown Book Group
2016, pp 480, Rs 399