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The Devotion of Suspect X

154 statements
29 feature instances
2 referencing feature instances

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The Devotion of Suspect X	label	The Devotion of Suspect X
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The Devotion of Suspect X	comment	The Devotion of Suspect X is a 2005 mystery novel written by prolific Japanese author Keigo Higashino. The novel is the first in his loose "Detective Galileo" series, about brilliant but eccentric physics professor Manabu Yukawa, who is frequently consulted for advice on tough cases by his old schoolmate Detective Shunpei Kusanagi. In Higashino's native Japan, it won the prestigious Naoki Prize, one of Japan's most highly regarded literary accolades (Koji Suzuki, the author of The Ring, is also a notable nominee of the award). After it got an English translation in 2011, it went on to be nominated for the equally prestigious Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and helped put Higashino on the map in the English-speaking world.Like most great mystery stories, it begins with a sudden act of shocking violence. Humble bento shop employee Yasuko Hanoaka, a single mother, stumbles into an unexpected confrontation with her abusive ex-husband Shinji Togashi after years of trying to escape him. When Togashi crosses the threshold of her home and tries to threaten her teenage daughter, Yasuko fights back in desperation, and is ultimately forced to kill him in self-defense. Faced with an impossible choice between confessing and covering up her crime, salvation arrives from a most unexpected source: Yasuko's neighbor Tetsuya Ishigami, a quiet loner who teaches mathematics at the local high school.With eerie precision, Ishigami deduces Yasuko's crime in mere minutes—but instead of phoning the police, he offers to help her cover up the crime without question. Days later, Yasuko is prepared to face the inevitable police investigation with an airtight alibi, thoroughly baffling Kusanagi when he deduces Togashi's identity and fingers Yasuko as the most likely suspect in his murder. But when Kusanagi goes to his old friend Yukawa (called "Detective Galileo") for advice, things take an unexpectedly personal turn. Why? Ishigami and Yukawa were once schoolmates at Tokyo's Imperial University, and both men are well-acquainted with how the other thinks. As the mystery races towards its conclusion, it becomes clear to Yukawa that he and his old friend have wound up on opposite sides of the law, and that Ishihami may have put his considerable analytical skills towards constructing The Perfect Crime. But why would a middle-aged math teacher want to cover up a crime committed by a complete stranger? And why does every piece of evidence point towards an explanation that couldn't possibly be true?The general consensus is that it has one of the more shocking Twist Endings that you're likely to encounter in a mystery novel. If you want to experience the big twist as it was meant to be experienced, proceed with caution.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_14c791fb	type	Conflicting Loyalty
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_14c791fb	comment	Conflicting Loyalty: Kusanagi implores Yukawa to tell him the truth as the latter deduces, out of both his duty of a police detective and a concern for Yukawa after witnessing Yukawa's apparent emotional pain for holding the truth to himself. Yukawa agrees to tell him on the condition that Kusanagi will never acts on it within any official capacity. Kusanagi agrees to the term and is willing to keep the information to himself for some time, but secretly decides that he will pursue the leads identified by Yukawa's theory if Yasuko doesn't turn themselves in after an extended period of time, even if it will likely cost him his friendship with Yukawa.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_1c5002bc	type	The Stoic
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_1c5002bc	comment	The Stoic: Ishigami's defining trait. He sees everything in the world in terms of mathematics, and absolutely nothing can phase him. But not even he's immune to love, as it turns out.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_292d1ccd	type	Everyone Went to School Together
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_292d1ccd	comment	Everyone Went to School Together: Kusanagi, Ishigami and Yukawa all went to Imperial University at the same time, but they studied in different departments (Kusanagi studied sociology, Ishigami studied math, and Yukawa studied physics).
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_4b39c18	type	Taking the Heat
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_4b39c18	comment	Taking the Heat: At the climax, Ishigami surprises everyone by calling the police and confessing to Togashi's murder, getting Yasuko off the hook. Then subverted after The Reveal: he really is the culprit they're looking for—but the murder victim isn't who they think he is.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_4bfcfa7c	type	Kansas City Shuffle
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_4bfcfa7c	comment	Kansas City Shuffle: How Ishigami manages to outsmart the police. While they're investigating Togashi's murder, they never once suspect that the corpse isn't really Togashi, and that the real Togashi was murdered a day earlier than they think he was. And while they're trying to find holes in Yasuko's alibi, they never suspect that it's the corpse itself that they should be suspicious of.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_50f66629	type	Crazy-Prepared
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_50f66629	comment	Crazy-Prepared: Ishigami prepares for every eventuality when he sets out to help cover up Togashi's murder. Taken to disturbing lengths when it turns out that he went so far as to murder an innocent homeless man to throw the police off the scent, and that he was fully prepared to turn himself in as the murderer in Yasuko's place. He knew that the police would eventually sweat the real murderer's identity out of him, so he made sure that he actually was the real murderer.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_6439de78	type	Heroic Sacrifice
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_6439de78	comment	Heroic Sacrifice: Yes, Ishigami does some pretty questionable things, but that doesn't change the fact that he's fully willing to go to prison for life so that Yasuko can keep her freedom, and that he was planning to do that all along. Almost everything that he did was to make the police suspect him of Togashi's murder instead of her.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_6774150c	type	If I Can't Have Youâ€¦
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_6774150c	comment	If I Can't Have You…: Ishigami does not take kindly to finding out that Yasuko is seeing Kudo, after he risked everything to help her beat a murder rap. Then ultimately subverted: he's much better at handling rejection than the police assume; his anger was an act to make it seem more likely that he murdered Togashi.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_6d332aea	type	Driven to Suicide
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_6d332aea	comment	Driven to Suicide: It is heavily implied that Yasuko's daughter Misato attempts to commit suicide towards the end of story.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_7d3f1d63	type	The Ending Changes Everything
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_7d3f1d63	comment	The Ending Changes Everything: The Reveal that everything Ishigami had done was actually an elaborate plot to frame himself for Togashi's murder, and that he had killed an innocent homeless man to accomplish it, casts virtually everything about him in a very different light.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_7d49d74a	type	Cultural Translation
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_7d49d74a	comment	Cultural Translation: In the English translation, Yasuko works at a "lunchbox shop" instead of a bento shop. If you're reasonably familiar with Japanese culture, though, it's pretty obvious that the "lunch boxes" are bento boxes.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_8151ec48	type	Driving Question
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_8151ec48	comment	Driving Question: Just why exactly is Ishigami, a logically minded maths teacher, so willing to go to extreme lengths to protect a woman he's never spoken to? The final chapter reveals the answer: It's because a chance meeting with Yasuko is what saved Ishigami from committing suicide.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_8b68d9a7	type	Stalker with a Crush
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_8b68d9a7	comment	Stalker with a Crush: Ishigami to Yasuko. He has a pretty unhealthy habit of showing up at the bento shop just to see her, he's been known to give her unwelcome phone calls, and he quickly turns hostile when he finds out she's seeing Kudo. Then ultimately subverted: he's in love with Yasuko, and his love for her can be pretty obsessive and one-sided, but it's a lot more innocent than it seems. He's just pretending to be a stalker so that the police will suspect him of Togashi's murder instead of her.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_8ed5c6e4	type	Asshole Victim
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_8ed5c6e4	comment	Asshole Victim: Togashi is a textbook example. The entire plot is kicked off by his murder, but considering he's a slimy car salesman who moonlights as a domestic abuser, nobody sheds a tear for him. Averted by the innocent homeless man who the police thought was Togashi.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_9d12bbc1	type	Foreshadowing
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_9d12bbc1	comment	Foreshadowing: The first time Kusanagi inspects the crime scene by the river, he makes a comment to Kishitani, saying the fate of the investigation depends on how long it takes the police to figure out the victim's identity. Guess where everything goes wrong with the investigation ... When the police first examine Togashi's corpse, they come to the conclusion that Yasuko couldn't possibly have acted alone in his murder because she's too small to have overpowered him by herself, and the strangulation marks seem to have been left by a taller man. This is made to look like a mistake by the police, but they're actually right: the corpse isn't Togashi, and Yasuko really didn't murder him—Ishigami did. Early on in the investigation, Kusanagi has a conversation with Yukawa during which the latter says he is not suggesting "that the police had made a mistake identifying the body".That is exactly what has happened. The repeated references to the unsolved "P=NP" problem. The problem poses the simple question "Is it easier to solve a problem, or to determine whether someone else's answer to that problem is correct?" Or in other words: is it easier to solve a murder for the police, or to prove that they've been trying to solve the wrong man's murder all along? Ishigami tells Kusanagi that his math tests are so hard because he likes to take advantage of his students' assumptions, often making problems look like they're a different kind of problem than they really are. His scheme uses that principle too: once the police have a motive and a suspect for Togashi's murder, they never question their basic assumption that the murder victim is really who they think he is. Coincidentally, Kusanagi later hears Yukawa talking to a student about tunnel vision because the student assumes he should use one theory to explain an experiment process when in fact it suits a different theory better. Kusanagi comments on how similar Yukawa's thought process is to Ishigami's, which prompts Yukawa to discover what Ishigami's real scheme is.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_a8a4b41e	type	Not So Stoic
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_a8a4b41e	comment	Not So Stoic: Ishigami is an unflappable mathematical genius who can handle the sight of a dead body without batting an eye, but he's also deeply in love with Yasuko, and pretty insecure about the thought that she'll never love him back.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_ab2df806	type	Red Baron
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_ab2df806	comment	Red Baron: Ishigami and Yukawa both have them. "The Buddha" and "Detective Galileo", respectively.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_acecb17d	type	Chekhov's Skill
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_acecb17d	comment	Chekhov's Skill: Ishigami has martial arts experience, and he spends his spare time coaching the judo team at his high school. This comes in handy when he decides to ambush a homeless man and strangle him to death.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_b5171e10	type	Tragic Villain
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_b5171e10	comment	Tragic Villain: Ultimately, all Ishigami really wanted was to be loved. That doesn't change the fact that he killed an innocent man, which he fully realizes is an unforgivable crime.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_b5e63cc4	type	Shadow Archetype
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_b5e63cc4	comment	Shadow Archetype: Ishigami is essentially a dark mirror of his old friend Yukawa, showing us how he might turn out if he ever gets so immersed in the academic world that he loses touch with his human side.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_c3c3c608	type	Evil Former Friend
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_c3c3c608	comment	Evil Former Friend: Yukawa comes to see his old friend Ishigami as this, though he recognizes that he probably had good intentions for most of the things that he did.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_c541e8f3	type	SympatheticCriminal
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_c541e8f3	comment	Sympathetic Criminal: Yasuko and Ishigami are undeniably criminals, but all of their actions are completely defensible: Yasuko killed her abusive ex-husband in self-defense, and Ishigami just wants to help her avoid getting sent to prison. Or so it seems: Ishigami's plan to help Yasuko involved murdering a homeless man, which not even his old friend Yukawa can defend.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: Ishigami's plan utilizes this. He kills a homeless man and conceals his identity, but leaves just enough evidence to make the police think he was Togashi—thus throwing off their investigation by a day, and giving Yasuko time to prepare an airtight alibi. His scheme hinges on the police's assumption that nobody would ever be crazy enough to cover up a murder with another murder.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_dc579c91	type	Contrived Coincidence
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_dc579c91	comment	Contrived Coincidence: Yukawa only ends up solving the mystery because he recognizes Ishigami as his old friend from university, and he deduces that he was the real murderer while catching up with him. If not for that, the mystery would have gone unsolved. Even Yasuko comments that the only failure in Ishigami's scheme is not counting on Detective Kusanagi and him having a mutual friend in Yukawa. It is even more so if you consider that Yukawa only becomes suspicious when Ishigami casually observes how Yukawa still has a full head of hair when they happen to look at their reflections on a glassdoor, which seems very out-of-character coming from Ishigami as Yukawa has known the man to not care about appearances. Yukawa reasons that Ishigami must be in a position where he suddenly has to worry about his own appearance - that he is in love, yet he remains strangely disinterested when talking about Yasuko and the murder of her ex-husband. That was the starting point of Yukawa's interest in the case. Up to that point, even Yukawa hasn't considered the possibility of Ishigami having anything to do with the case and is just happy to be reunited with an old friend.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_dcbe8a6e	type	Chekhov's Gunman
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_dcbe8a6e	comment	Chekhov's Gunman: The homeless squatters in the camp under the bridge by Yasuko's apartment. With the constant references to them in the narration, you just know they're going to be crucial to the story in some way. They are: it turns out that the body that the police found was one of them, cleverly made up to look like Togashi.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_e069fae8	type	Bad Guy Bar
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_e069fae8	comment	Bad Guy Bar: Kusanagi is pretty thoroughly repulsed by the cocktail bar where Yasuko used to work. Considering it was a regular hangout for people like Togashi, his reaction is probably justified.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_e9e35e8f	type	Exact Words
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_e9e35e8f	comment	Exact Words: Ishigami technically didn't say that he killed Shinji Togashi, he just said that he killed the man that the police found by the water treatment facility, which is 100 percent true.
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The Devotion of Suspect X / int_f96f8980	type	Love Makes You Crazy
The Devotion of Suspect X / int_f96f8980	comment	Love Makes You Crazy: Ishigami's love for Yasuko drives him to do some pretty crazy things. Subverted in one particular instance, though: he didn't kill a homeless man because he was crazy, he did it because he genuinely thought it was the only way to help Yasuko beat her murder rap.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

	The Devotion of Suspect X	hasFeature	Everybody Hates Mathematics / int_790b994a
	The Devotion of Suspect X	hasFeature	The Remake / int_790b994a

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