SALVATION OF A SAINT
BY KEIGO HIGASHINO
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Genre/theme : mystery, crime
Blurb :
A man was found dead in his home from poisoned coffee. His wife has a strong motive as a suspect after she was dumped by her husband. The problem is, on the day of the murder, the woman was thousands of kilometers from the scene. Detective Kusanagi and Detective Utsumi Kaoru who are investigating this case have conflicting opinions about who the culprit is. However, Utsumi felt that Kusanagi was too empathetic towards the victim's wife and that made his judgment blurry.
Therefore, Utsumi asked Professor Manabu Yukawa to help the police, as well as straighten Kusanagi's logic. But even the genius scientist nicknamed Detective Galileo was confused. There's no way someone could put poison in coffee from far, right? This is where the professor's intelligence is tested. He had to unravel the trick of how the poison appeared at the right time, in the perfect place, and most importantly, didn't miss the mark.
Character :
1. Ayane
Ayane is Yoshitaka’s wife, she is a famous patchwork craftsman in Japan. Beside of that, she also opened a course to teach people who are interested in learning and making patchwork crafts.
2. Yoshitaka
Yoshitaka in this story was described as a cold-hearted man who is very focused on his desire to have children without really thinking about his marriage life or the woman who will give birth to his child. For him, women are just a display statue that disturbing and the person in charge of giving birth to children for him, that’s all, nothing more.
3. Hiromi
Hiromi is Ayane’s student and assistant. Because they had worked together for a pretty long time, they became very close, even Ayane thought of Hiromi as her own little sister. Because of their closeness, Ayane even often invites Hiromi to visit her house if she was having a party or even just to eat.
4. Kusanagi dan Utsumi
These two characters are detectives who investigate the case of Yoshitaka’s death.
5. Yukawa
Yukawa is a physicist who is often being asked for help by the police or detectives to help them find out things related to the cases that are difficult to reveal.
Summary :
Story started with a slightly tense atmosphere due to a conversation between Yoshitaka and Ayane, a husband and wife who have been married for a year, but have not yet been blessed with a child. They were arguing about it, Yoshitaka, who had a strong desire to have children for a long time, continued to urge Ayane who was still not pregnant even after nine months of their marriage. From this opening, it can be seen that Yoshitaka is the type of man who only thinks of women as producing children, he doesn't care about his marriage life or the woman who will become the mother of his child, all he thinks about is that he can have children. It can be seen from their conversation which brought up about the initial marriage agreement proposed by Yoshitaka, which was stated that they would divorce if within a year of marriage, Ayane could not conceive.
The conversation continued with the ending that Yoshitaka chose to divorce and said that he already had another woman without mentioning the name of the woman. Ayane who heard it was silent, she did not reply to that and instead said that she would go to her parents’s house because her father's condition was not in a good condition.
On Saturday, Ayane actually went to her parents's house, but before that, Ayane decided to meet with Hiromi and leave her house key. When Hiromi asked why, Ayane simply replied that she didn't know when she would be home and was afraid that there would be things that needed to be picked up at her house and no one was there. Hiromi finally agreed to keep the key.
But then, in the next chapter, I was surprised by the fact that Hiromi is a woman who became Yoshitaka's mistress. Because in this chapter, Yoshitaka asked Hiromi to come to his house, Hiromi who heard that then immediately accepted it for granted and even decided to stay overnight. After that at Sunday morning, she went to work, but before that, she was asked by Yoshitaka to show him how to make coffee that tasted good.
After work, Hiromi then tried to contact Yoshitaka to ask if he was home but Yoshitaka still didn't answer the call even after 3 calls. Hiromi who feels that it was strange and worried finally decides to go to Yoshitaka's house and open the house with the spare key Ayane gave her. When the door was opened, she walked in but what she saw was terrible, Yoshitaka's body was lying on the floor with coffee spilled from the glass which still in his hand. Frantically, she dialed 911.
Yoshitaka's body was then examined by a forensic team and it was known that he died from the presence of arsenic acid in the coffee he drank. Detectives were then called in to investigate further about this death case. Arsenic acid was then detected in the kettle where Yoshitaka used water to make his own coffee.
At the beginning of the investigation, the investigation focused on the two main suspects, namely Ayane and Hiromi. The reason is simple, Hiromi is being suspected because she was the first person who arrive at the crime scene and find Yoshitaka and was the last person that communicate with him, while Ayane is suspected of having a grudge against Yoshitaka for having an affair.
However, both have strong alibis. If it was Hiromi who did it, why didn't she get rid of the evidence and instead let the kettle where the forensic found the arsenic acid come before she actually called the police. Then Ayane's alibi is just as strong as Hiromi’s, she was proven to be in Sapporo while her and Yoshitaka's house was in Hokkaido. So how could a person who was thousands of kilometers from where the body was found, could kill her husband?
The investigation feels so complicated with the two detectives having conflicting opinions, Utsumi assuming that Ayane is the killer, and Kusanagi assuming that Hiromi is the killer. Furthermore, Ayane keep continues to defend Hiromi whenever Hiromi is suspected. For that, Utsumi then asks for help from Yukawa, a physicist who previously could also help solve such a difficult case. Yukawa who felt interested then came directly to the place where the body was found. Then suspicion grew, because no arsenic acid was found on any surface in the kettle and only in water, then the water could come from two places, which are bottled mineral water or from a water tap that has a filter. But again, after being tested by forensics, arsenic acid was not found in both places, plus it was impossible for the water to come from a water faucet because when it was detected, the part where you removed the faucet had not been touched for a year and it was impossible to get the poison in from the front faucet. The hypothesis that continues to be met with failure makes everyone depressed, feeling that the crime that occurred was a perfect crime.
Conclusion :
In my opinion, who is a beginner in reading English novels, this novel is quite difficult to read because there are quite a lot of scientific words that make it take me longer to finish this novel because I need to find out first the meaning of each word that I don't know. But from the side of the story, I really like the main point of this Yoshitaka case, how finally the detectives and Yukawa were able to find out how this case that could be categorized as a perfect crime was committed by the killer and how the truth surprised me especially in the explanation of how the killer committed the crime which I really never thought about while reading. Although at first I personally felt a little bored because I felt unable to enter and felt like I was part of the story, but as time went on I became more and more interested in guessing how the killer could commit such an innocent crime. So overall, this novel is a very interesting novel to read that have a reallyyy great plot and to help lead us to find out the truth.
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