House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O'Donnell can be described as a slow-burning, haunting police procedural, with layers of eerie gothic tale. Although quite a bit of it revolves around death, its darkness is laced with some wonderfully witty dialogue and vivid characters. It is an incredible mix of genres, truly a perfect stay-at-home winter reading book.
A deftly conceived and executed novel, The Devotion of Suspect X is a puzzling treat for any mystery fan. Higashino cleverly inverts the classic whodunit structure by revealing the "who" at the book's beginning, allowing the reader to focus on the complexities of how and why. He grounds the story in the perspectives of both the perpetrators and investigators, playing any possible sympathies against each other. On its face this is a straightforward procedural, but Higashino's methodical style and sleight of hand make it truly engrossing. And his moral and intellectual probing, while subtle, reaches a feverish high by the novel's conclusion.
This crime story set in Tokyo and translated from the original Japanese is a clever twist on the usual whodunit murder mystery. Rather than the reader guessing who is responsible for the murder—you know that in the early pages—the author introduces a mind game between two geniuses, one a mathematician trying to protect the culprit and the other a physicist assisting the police in solving the crime. Mathematical puzzling is key to this battle of wits, but one doesn’t have to be a mathematician to appreciate the elegance of this device as the drama unfolds. A great crime story for those who prefer intellectual teases to violence or fast-paced thrills.
