The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #1)

I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, and this will be no exception, but the twist at the end of this book is what really sold me on it so it'll be hard to not talk about my favorite part.

While I would categorize this as a mystery, the reader has a front-row seat to the inciting murder (or really "self-defense-turned-manslaughter" in this case), so it's not a whodunit. Really the central mystery is whether or not the detectives assigned to the case are able to piece together what we as the audience already know, or if the involved parties can get away with it.

The medium-sized cast of characters is surprisingly interwoven with each other, even if they don't immediately realize how, which leads to some interesting dynamics and alliances and interactions. There's a physicist and a mathematician that were buddies back in college years before this plot takes place that wind up getting involved in this whole mess, and they end up having a particularly bittersweet arc. Lot of plot balls getting juggled here, but the author manages to catch them all.

There's a twist towards the end that genuinely caught me flatfooted. Some in my book club complained that it wasn't foreshadowed enough and that no reader could've realistically predicted it, but I didn't find that my enjoyment suffered for it. And with a final scene ripped right out of a Greek tragedy where nobody wins (my favorite kind of ending because I'm evil), this was a surprisingly satisfying read.