The Devotion of Suspect X

by Keigo Higashino

In this mystery a Japanese woman and her daughter murder her abusive ex-husband who has once again tracked her down and wants to patch up their relationship.  She doesn't want to have anything to do with him and her daughter hits him on the head and he then attacks her and starts to strangle her.  The mother then chokes him with an electical code.

They are shocked by what they have done but are even more shocked when their neighbour, a math teacher, offers to help them by disposing of the body and giviing them advice on how to construct an alibi.

It turns out that the man has a crush on the woman and had heard the disturbance.

The police come to interview the woman and ask the neighbour if he has any knowledge of how the husband might have been killed.  All parties deny any knowledge.

One of the police detectives has a friend, a physics prof, whom he uses as an adviser on occasion.  The physicist tells the police officer that the math teacher is really a math genius and he is surprised to find that the man is only a school teacher.  He goes to visit the math teacher, who was a colleague in university.

The math teacher is distraught when he finds out the woman is dating another man.  He tries to frighten the man off.

The prof then starts his own investigations into the murder and comes to suspect that his math friend is somewhow involved, but he doesn't want to believe it.  It is a battle of wits between the two.  When the math teacher realizes that the physics prof suspects the truth, he confesses to the murder.  To justify his own confession he had indeed killed someone, as well as disposing of the woman's husband.

This was an unusual mystery.  It was an okay story but I think I prefer stories where there is a bit more character development.  This one basically told the tale with little character analysis.