nerd teacher [books] reviewed The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Detective Galileo)
Marketers Need to Stop Super-Ruining Books
2 stars
This book, had its author not been marketed as "The Japanese Stieg Larsson," would've been... Well, it would've been okay, and I would've left it with some of the same complaints. But I felt them more strongly because what I'd been primed for was met in the worst of ways possible, in a way that wasn't at all in line with the point of Stieg Larsson's original trilogy.
There are too few books that deal with abused women, especially abused women who actually succeed despite everything. There are too few books that even engage with the concept of killing your local rapist (or abuser) and what that can possibly mean. There are too few books that engage with the internal struggle of someone who has done that to save themselves (especially in a situation where it wasn't intentional) and actually engaged with what it meant.
This book isn't that, but …
This book, had its author not been marketed as "The Japanese Stieg Larsson," would've been... Well, it would've been okay, and I would've left it with some of the same complaints. But I felt them more strongly because what I'd been primed for was met in the worst of ways possible, in a way that wasn't at all in line with the point of Stieg Larsson's original trilogy.
There are too few books that deal with abused women, especially abused women who actually succeed despite everything. There are too few books that even engage with the concept of killing your local rapist (or abuser) and what that can possibly mean. There are too few books that engage with the internal struggle of someone who has done that to save themselves (especially in a situation where it wasn't intentional) and actually engaged with what it meant.
This book isn't that, but based on the summary and the use of the name 'Stieg Larsson'... And then based on the opening... That was the book I that I expected.
That was not what I got.
Without spoiling it for others, I hate the ending. I hate the solution, I hate how 'Detective Galileo' (a physicist) is used, I hate the friendship between him and the actual detective, and I hate the message that it sends without doing any of the fucking work for what it delivers. There were so many elements that could've been interestingly used and still supported the characters who had suffered the abuse of the victim. Higashino did none of that, and I just...
He is not The Japanese Stieg Larsson. I don't want anyone to be Stieg Larsson of anywhere, but if that were a mantle that could be passed on? Higashino could not take it because the point of his book did not at all engage with the true forms of abuse that his characters endured and felt like they would endure.
I especially hate that this book could actually properly focus on Yasuko and Misato (a mother and daughter), but he makes it all about Ishigami and his internal thoughts. This man, this man who was going to further harass and manipulate Yasuko and Misato... Who took advantage of their situation... And then committed his own heinous crime... And Yasuko being forced to understand what his "love" for her actually looked like and forced to feel guilty for decisions beyond her own control... And some flippant use of suicide for Misato...
The more that I think about it, the more I find reasons for disliking something that could've actually been interesting. I genuinely hate this, and I hate that it's being marketed as if it's in line with the point and purpose of Stieg Larsson's novels (and it's the fact that it's not actually engaging with the abuse of the characters that makes me so upset; Larsson is a symbol, as this marketer utilises them).
