Book Review - Salvation Of A Saint

There are two types of crime thriller / murder mystery novels. One are those, which throw in innumerable characters with seemingly incomprehensible and complex plot at the very start. Then there are those, which look simple and straightforward in the beginning, with no complex character entanglements, but which go on to prove your assumptions entirely wrong as you progress. This one, belongs to the second category.

--- When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away?

As Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly unrelated sequence of events he finds himself falling for Ayane. When his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel the most spectacular web of deceit they have ever faced...  ---

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Salvation Of A Saint

By Keigo Higashino

377pp | Abacus

$24.99 | Rs350

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Let me ask you a question? What is the USP of a murder-mystery book/novel? The most intriguing thing that holds up the suspense and makes you turn page after page until you arrive right at the end?Yes, who's the murderer is the right guess. Provided you did guess it of-course. 

But that's where Keigo Higashino's book presents it's first surprise. By the end of first chapter, you know who the murderer is. But this very revelation, as it turns out goes on to become the thing which makes the whole book so interesting. The next chapters, with each passing page throws at you so many puzzles that you find yourself trying to outwit the book while each time failing and reshuffling your own mind and contradicting yourself.

The suspense in Salvation of the saint revolves around how exactly does the murderer manages to kill a person while not being there physically. While you go through the mind-racking, eye-bulging, head-scratching, and sometimes re-reading-the-passage-to-get-the-logic-right kind of plot, you feel surprised and amazed at the ingenuity of this carefully woven web by the killer. 

How do you find a killer when no visible proof seems to crop up? You look under the dark belly, you re-enact the crime scenes, you understand personal stories and backgrounds of all those connected to the deceased. You use the simplest logic and find out how it could be done. You make theories and then you go about proving them until you zero down the one that actually has scope for proof. Then you work on finding the proof. All while getting information and understanding the suspects' personal lives, trusting intuition, observing every action and actually listening to every word uttered. 

Complete, intense and thorough are the words that define this thriller. Chapters end at cliffhangers, and so alluring are the subsequent ones, that you might find yourself pausing somewhere in between the chapter, instead of at the end. Because the suspense is too much to bear that you can't just close the book and go have a snack after a chapter finishes.

The book proves itself to be one of the most enigmatic grab-holders of what you've read in a long time. And as you draw close to the end, you almost never notice how fast you have reached there. It just compels you to keep turning the pages until you reach the final surprise. 

I would say that this book has made me a sort of a fan of Keigo Higashino. And I think I'm definitely going to now read the writer's other books too. And there is no chance I would not recommend it to anyone who wants to read an interesting book. No matter if the reader is a murder mystery fan or not. I would rate the book 4/5.



Disclaimer: The links to the online shopping stores in the review are for quoting purposes only and do not mean that they offer the best price. Nor do they imply any sort of recommendation from me.

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