Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino Book review

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino Book review 

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino  This is, i think, like the second book in the detective galileo series, in the sense that this is the second book that was translated from the series into English. 

But i think this is actually like the fifth or sixth novel in the series. But these were originally published in japanese and then translated by alexander smith. 

So this is a mystery book and i read the devotion of suspect x by keigo higoshino a couple of years ago and adored it. It is such a good book. 

I will link to my book review of that if you are interested, but it is freaking fantastic. Like it's even been adapted into a movie. 

So it's an extremely popular mystery book. And so ever since then, i've just been like very slowly working my way through keigo higoshino's other books. 

So in this mystery book you are following this death of a man who was about to leave his wife. And so the story starts off with them having this conversation about the fact that this guy has basically like a one-year plan, and he presented his plan to his wife before they got married. 

And so his plan was basically like he wanted to have a child with her within the first year of their marriage, otherwise he was going to leave her to have a child with someone else. 

Because he basically believed that the only reason to be married was to have children. They have this conversation, that night they have a dinner party with another couple that has recently had a baby as well as the wife's assistant at her work, and then the wife goes away on a trip to visit her parents because her father has been sick recently and she hasn't seen them at all since she's been married. 

And so she basically asked her husband, like, you know, 'fine, i will agree to the agreement just give me this weekend to see my parents and then we'll resolve things.' However that weekend while she is away her husband dies. 

And so like in this situation, like the very obvious suspect for the murder is the wife, but since she was literally hundreds of miles away when he had died, you know, the police now have to figure out what exactly is going on. 

So that's all i'll give in terms of synopsis because i think that's all you really need. Keigo Higashino is a really great mystery writer. 

I think that he is perfect if you are someone who loves like agatha christie whodunit style books because i think that he has like a very similar like vibe in vein to those books, or at least the translation does. 

So it provides like a similar sort of feeling of a kind of whodunit but what keigo higoshino does, or at least what i've perceived from the couple of books that i've read, is that he kind of takes that mystery style that is very known in the western world and like turns it on its head. 

And i think that a lot of japanese mystery writers actually do this, where they take the idea of whodunit and they change it and they ask a different question. So instead of asking who done it, they asked like why or how did they do it. 

And this book is definitely like similar in that sense. Like this is a book where you don't necessarily know who exactly did it until towards the end of the book, but in my head it was pretty clear who did it. 

And so you're following the detectives the whole time that you are learning about the case and things like that. And so you're kind of just like finding out information as they're finding it out and putting the pieces together with them, which is always really fun for me as a mystery reader. 

But you see that there's only really like one, maybe two, potential suspects. At least in my head that's how it was the entire book. And so as you're reading through the story, you're just trying to figure out like, how did they pull this off?

And then why did they pull it off? Because like the motivation is going to be part of the solving of the crime itself. The other reason why these books are like very good for agatha christie style readers is because the murders themselves are never extremely straightforward. 

Like it's not like someone literally just stabbed someone else or something like that. Like there's always some sort of like complication that makes it very difficult.

So the reason why these books are called the detective galileo series is not because there is someone named detective galileo in this book, there's someone who's nicknamed detective galileo who is featured in these books. 

That person is professor yukawa who is basically a consultant for the police whenever they are dealing with like these extremely complicated cases. 

He is a — i don't remember. I think it's a physics professor something along those lines, like some sort of science professor. 

And so they come to him with these like really complicated puzzle type mysteries, and he like looks at things from a completely different perspective and is able to help provide answers for whatever is going on in the case. 

And he always does like figure it out. And so it's really fun, again, reading these books because you see like the detectives going about the typical like detective route of trying to figure out what exactly happened 

then you also get to see little bits of detective galileo going through it in a completely different manner, asking different questions and things like that that feels more reminiscent of like a sherlock holmes type of idea, of like asking all of these weird questions that don't make sense to anyone until you find out like why he's asking those questions and the things he's trying to do. 

So yeah, i really enjoyed this book. I think that this series in general is just like really, really fun, and again perfect for people who are fans of agatha christie and sherlock holmes and things along those lines. 

There is some like added layers though to this book that i think sort of elevates it to another level, or provides just something else or something different. Like agatha christie books in general are pretty short.

This one, you know, is a 300-ish page novel. And so you get like backstory and you get motivations and you get to learn about these characters a little bit more, which i think is really fun. 

I think like something that i've noticed with these books is that there's always a lot of discussion about the people who are committing these crimes and you get to really learn about their motivations and the reasons behind the choices that they made and things like that. 

And i always find those to be like really, really satisfactory. Like that's one of the reasons why i think like devotion of suspect x is one of my all-time favorite books, is because you get to the end 

you see these explanations of the choices that were made by the characters and it's like nothing that you probably would have ever thought about but it makes complete sense in the end. 

This is kind of the same thing where you kind of get an idea for whether they're going to go with the story but like the full wrap around of the story is really, really beautifully done, in my opinion.

This is like one of those books where it's like perfectly crafted, all of the like strings are perfectly placed, everything is just put together so, so well. Like keigo higashino is someone who if you are a fan of mysteries and you haven't given us a chance yet, i would definitely definitely recommend. 

And i think that especially if you're someone who reads a lot of mystery books and maybe gets a little bit — i don't want to say jaded. But, you know, like if you read a lot of a genre, you see a lot of the same like tropes play out or the same themes play out and i think that, again, another reason why i'm really attracted to the books that keigo higashino writes is because he asks different questions. 

He turns these tropes on their head a little bit and provides you with a different perspective with all these mysteries, which again is always fantastic. All right, so those are my quick thoughts on salvation of a saint. 

Also read: The Adventures of Little Kanya by Ashwini R Sane review

Also read: How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang book review

Also read: A Knock at Midnight by Brittany K. Barnett Book Review

Also read: Conjure Women by Afia Atakora book Review

Also read: Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer book Review

Also read: From Scratch by Tembi Locke Book Review

 THANK YOU SO MUCH