Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino
Thank you to St.
Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Japan’s master
of mysteries' latest book, Invisible Helix. I’m not sure if he has more books and characters in Japan,
but Keigo Higashino has two characters who solve mysteries in different series in
his English translated novels: Detective Kyoichiro Kaga and Professor Yukawa,
also known as Detective Galileo. I’ve read nearly all of the Higashino mysteries
that have been translated in English, but the last two books that I read, which
were Detective Kaga books, were not as good as some of the others. The stories
moved along nicely, but I felt like the plot twist and motivation for the
murder was somewhat farfetched. This book, however, finds Higashino returning
to form, and I think I realized that I enjoy the Detective Galileo books more
than the Kaga books.
Like some of the other Higashino mysteries, this book focuses on a kind of cultural nuance of Japanese society—in particular, it looks at the stigma of single parenthood, and how women, especially women in post-war Japan, struggled to care for children when they were not married or had recently lost partners. The story starts off with a woman who moves from the countryside to Tokyo to escape the lack of opportunities in her families village. She finds more opportunities in Tokyo, and also meets a new man. They eventually fall in love, and the woman, who remains unnamed, becomes pregnant. The father sticks around, but dies suddenly, possibly due to working too hard to try to provide for his new family. The woman gives birth shortly after, but without a job or child care options, she must give up the child for adoption. It’s also kind of implied that being an unmarried mother was somewhat of a social stigma, since the woman was hesitant to tell her parents about the baby. The book then moves from this prologue to the story of Sonoka and Chizuko Shimauchi, a daughter and her single mother in current day Japan. Chizuko, the mother, is somewhat evasive about Sonoka’s father, but Sonoka has a generally happy life with a mother who deeply loves and cares for her. Despite being a single mother, Chizuko works hard and even moves to take a new job so that Sonoka can attend design school after graduating high school. Sonoka, who works in a floral shop, has a happy life, until Chizuko suddenly dies. I thought that this might be the mystery, but actually, that is still to come. While Sonoka struggles to come to grips with her mother’s death, she meets a young man at her job, and he eventually moves in with her, providing her with new furniture, telling her to get rid of her mother’s old stuff. I was a little surprised by how quickly Ryota Uetsuji moves in and takes over Sonoka’s life, but we also kind of learn that Sonoka heavily relied on her mother and kind of let people take the initiative with things. I’m not sure if Ryota sensed this or saw Sonoka as an opportunity to have a place to live, but generally he is an unlikeable character. He seems a little nice at first, and his appearance in Sonoka’s life has some parallels with the woman in the prologue. I think that this worked nicely in providing the reader with a kind of familiar template of lonely women trying to survive on their own, who meet men. However, to challenge our assumptions, we see how aggressive and pushy Ryota is, and he seems more like a freeloader than the kind of hard worker that the woman in the prologue met.
This all happens in the first chapter. By the second chapter, Ryota is dead, discovered washed ashore with a bullet in the back of his head. Detectives Kusanagi and Kaoru Utsumi are assigned to the case, and this is where the story really picks up. As Ryota’s live in girlfriend, Sonoka is immediately a suspect. She was away on a trip with a friend, but she has yet to return to work, taking a sudden and unexpected leave before Ryota’s body was discovered. Furthermore, she seems to have disappeared with a mysterious writer of children’s books who goes by Nana Asahi, but is really known as Nae Matsunaga. Sonoka’s disappearance sets of an investigation and search for her whereabouts, and the presences of Nana Asahi also leads the detectives to Professor Manabu Yukawa, who received a citation and a copy of one of Nana Asahi’s books for children about a scientific concept. I leave the story there without much more since after this point, I really couldn’t put the book down. Higashino’s narrative and the pursuit of Sonoka and Nana/Nae are propulsive and lead to many plot twists and turns. I also liked that there weren’t too many other characters introduced, but there are some interesting reveals, and much of these revelations deal with the kind of cultural beliefs in children and adoption in Japan. Although I really liked this story and found the mystery intriguing, I know that sometimes Japanese mysteries can be less appealing to Western audiences. Sometimes these can be a slow burn, but I really found this book more fast paced. The chapters are short and focused on the main characters, primarily told from the perspective of the detectives looking for clues and trying to verify their hypothesis about who killed Ryota and what the connection is between Sonoka and Nana/Nae. This leads them to investigate more into both Sonoka’s and Nana/Nae’s background, as well as the background of Sonoka’s mother Chizuko. There is another character, Hidemi Negishi, an owner and mama-san of a hostess club, who also ends up playing an important role in the book. The other part of the reveal which may be a challenge for western audiences is that part of the reveal also depends on interpretation of Japanese kanji and Chinese characters for the meaning of a word. I think the translator did an excellent job in explaining this and emphasizing its importance to the story and twist; however, I’m not sure whether every reader will be familiar with this kind of writing. Regardless, the book kept me guessing, and I was definitely surprised by the ending. There are many twists, even beyond when the murder is solved. This also made me want to continue to read to find out what would happen next. I was excited to find this book on NetGalley and see that it was available to read. I was even more excited after I read it to see that Higashino has returned to form, and I hope that his next mystery will be with Detective Galileo and will be just as entertaining as this one.
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