A Midsummer's Equation

Starred review from December 7, 2015
Edgar-finalist Higashino’s excellent third whodunit featuring Manabu Yukawa (after 2012’s Salvation of a Saint) takes the brilliant physicist to the dying Japanese resort town of Hari Cove, where Yukawa (aka Detective Galileo) offers his expertise at hearings on an offshore drilling proposal that promises to boost the nation’s economy by providing access to rare metals. Locals who fear the effects of the resulting environmental damage, which also threatens the area’s fishing industry, are against the plan. As the corporation behind the mining operation holds meetings to win over opponents, Masatsugu Tsukahara, a fellow guest at the hotel where Yukawa is lodging, is found at the base of a seaside cliff, apparently dead from an accidental fall. An autopsy reveals that Tsukahara actually died from carbon monoxide poisoning, and the mystery deepens when Yukawa learns that the dead man was a former homicide detective. Superb fair cluing and a nicely enigmatic lead will appeal to golden age fans.

December 15, 2015
The third case for Tokyo homicide detective Shunpei Kusanagi and professor Manabu Yukawa, who teaches physics at Imperial University, takes them far away from Tokyo--and far back from the present day as well. Yukawa, aka Detective Galileo, has come to the Green Rock Inn, in the little resort town of Hari Cove, to participate in a discussion of proposed undersea mining. Everyone involved agrees that Hari Cove is in danger, but some see the enemy as potential environmental disaster, while others, alarmed by the town's steep decline from its heyday, see the project as a potential economic savior. The morning after the conference, the body of Masatsugu Tsukahara, another guest of the inn, is discovered at the bottom of a sea cliff. The local police are eager to close the case as an accident, but the discovery that Tsukahara was retired from Tokyo homicide brings his former colleagues into the case, and they soon discover that he was already dead from carbon monoxide poisoning when he fell, or more likely was tossed, from the cliff. Further inquiries reveal that Tsukahara came to Hari Cove not for the mining conference but to seek out Hidetoshi Senba, a man he'd arrested 16 years earlier for the murder of an unemployed nightclub hostess. Kusanagi can't help thinking that his path would be a lot smoother if only he could locate the missing ex-convict himself or if he could at least figure out what business Tsukahara had with him. Yukawa, for his part, seems interested mainly in constructing experiments designed to teach elementary concepts in physics to Kyohei, the fifth-grader whose parents have sent him to Hari Cove to stay with his uncle, Green Rock Innkeeper Shigehiro Kawahata, his aunt Setsuko, and his cousin Narumi. But it's Yukawa, as usual (Salvation of a Saint, 2012, etc.), who'll carry off the sleuthing honors. Less playful and more labored than its predecessors but just as ingenious in working one twist after another in a case that seems absolutely twist-proof.

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May 1, 2015

Japanese readers pick up works by Higashino more than that of any other author, and he's added to his luster here with Edgar and Barry nominations. In this sequel to The Devotion of Suspect X, physicist Manabu Yukawa, aka Detective Galileo, is speaking at a conference in Hariguara, a summer resort that's fallen on hard times, when the body of a resort guest is found sprawled at the base of a sea cliff. As the victim was a policeman who died of carbon monoxide poisoning, it doesn't look like much of an accident.

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