Salvation of a Saint - “Planned, Perfect”

Keigo Higashino was a name unknown to me till it was connected with the Malayalam movie “Drishyam”, which was later remade into various languages including Hindi. It was told that the movie was inspired from his first book “The devotion of suspect X”.

I would have gone for “The devotion of suspect X,” had I not seen the movie. 

Coming back to the story of Salvation of a Saint, Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect—except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered.

The only other suspect is Ayane’s pupil Hiromi. 

However, the question of the story is not “who done it”, but how he (or she) did it, as we can guess the culprit after certain point of time. And you will keep on assuming the method used by the culprit, till the end! 

Some may find it a normal murder mystery. 

The language is simple and the story is laced with small doses of twists throughout. There are no unnecessary subplots, which may have affected the pace. Once begun, it will be difficult for the reader to keep the book down. 

Even a slow reader like me could finish the book in two days!

A thing that I distasted was the number of investigators. Not one or two, but five investigate the case in their own way. I have never come across more than two (one male and one female) investigating a case in any of the story I have ever read. Maybe the author used a real life scenario, wherein different teams would be investigating same case. 

All in all, a good read. You can go for it, if you like to read a fast-paced murder mystery.

Pros:   Well narrated and fast-paced

Cons:  Nothing out of the box, another murder mystery 

Rating:     4/5