Subsequently, he quit his job and started a career as a writer in Tokyo. He won the Edogawa Rampo Prize, which is awarded annually to the finest mystery work, in 1985 for the novel Hōkago (After School) at age 27. PS – I’ll post the 2022 Thoughtful Reading Challenge categories very soon.Keigo Higashino ( 東野圭吾) is one of the most popular and biggest selling fiction authors in Japan-as well known as James Patterson, Dean Koontz or Tom Clancy are in the USA.īorn in Osaka, he started writing novels while still working as an engineer at Nippon Denso Co.　(presently DENSO). Reminder – December’s challenge is to read a book set in Hawaii in remembrance of the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. How about you? Did you read a book with saint in the title last month? If you’re looking for a satisfying mystery novel, you can’t go wrong with Salvation of a Saint! I think this is a mystery even Agatha Christie would applaud. Yukawa ultimately figures out how the poison got in the coffee and it’s a doozy. He doesn’t get defensive when one of his theories is disproved – he just tosses it and moves on to testing his next theory.Īs Yukawa and the two detectives begin digging into the case and the lives of everyone involved in it, it becomes apparent that there’s more to it than they initially thought. He’s coldly rational but I liked his approach to problem solving.

Yukawa is nicknamed Detective Galileo, and this book is part of a series named for him. Utsumi becomes worried when Kusanagi appears to have a crush Ayane and consults with physics professor Yukawa for some objective help. The two main detectives on the case are Kusanagi (a mildly chauvinistic man) and Utsumi (a woman rookie).

There aren’t any obvious clues about how the poison got into the coffee and the police are stumped. Ayane is the logical culprit, but she was hundreds of miles away when the murder happened. Even though she knew it was coming, Ayane is hurt by his request for a divorce.Ī few days later, Yoshitaka lies dead in his living room, the murder weapon a cup of poisoned coffee. They agreed before the wedding that they would separate after a year if they didn’t have any children by then.

Yoshitaka tells his wife, Ayane, that he’s leaving her after a year of marriage because she’s infertile. Salvation of a Saint is set in Tokyo and begins with the breakup of a marriage. I’m afraid I’m a little late with my book review. November’s challenge was to read a book with “saint” in the title because All Saints Day falls in November. I read Salvation of a Saint as part of the 2021 Thoughtful Reading Challenge. Salvation of a Saint is a clever mystery that had me guessing not “whodunit” but “howtheydunit” until the very end.

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino