Invisible Helix is part of a detective series by the author Keigo Hishigano, I believe it's popular as the Detective Galileo series and this is the latest title. Our central character Sonoka, is a quite, shy, introverted, unambitious girl who lives with her mother and works at a flower shop while also studying design.
Her mother passes away quite unexpectedly and suddenly, she discovers this when she returns home one evening and finds her passed out on the bathroom floor. After rushing her to hospital, ske passes away in the next few hours. Being an only child of an orphaned mother, with no father ever in the picture, she is all alone in the world. Her mother's close friend Nae, being her only acquaintance left in the world she knows and was close with at some point. Partly due to loneliness and partly due to naivite she ends up in a relationship with a man who might not be what he seems at first.
As time goes it's clear to her as she endures abuse and ends up supporting him while he's out of work, that she needs to leave him. Having being alienated from her few friends and acquaintances she sees a ray of hope when she meets a woman claiming to be her grandmother. Though she knows it not to be possible, under pressure from her boyfriend she carries on with the farce to claim financial benefits.
It all changes and turns sinister when her boyfriend is found dead after her grandmother claims to have taken care of it. She goes on the run with Nae and is off the grid while the police start their investigation and search for her too.
What I loved -
The quite, unassuming manner of the police investigation. They go about their investigation in a logical, on dramatic way it's almost like watching a synchronised swimming session.
Ofcourse, what I most enjoyed is how I wasn't able to guess who the killer was. The pages flew especially as there was so much suspense surrounding all the key characters we meet.
A little glimpse into the Japanese nightlife and how the police detectives go about their work was the heart of the story.
Theh best part was the professor who joined the dots before the police could and how he single handedly solved the case.
This is one of the cosy whodunnits I enjoyed and you will too as it's a nicely placed quick read you can finish in a couple of reads.
INVISIBLE HELIX is part of a detective series by the author Keigo Hishigano. Our central character Sonoka, is a quiet, shy, introverted, unambitious girl who lives with her mother and works at a flower shop while also studying design.
Her mother passes away quite unexpectedly and suddenly, she discovers this when she returns home one evening and finds her passed out on the bathroom floor. After rushing her to the hospital, she passes away in the next few hours. Being an only child of an orphaned mother, with no father ever in the picture, she is all alone in the world. Her mother's close friend Nae, is the only acquaintance left in the world she knows and was close with at some point. Partly due to loneliness and partly due to naivety she ends up in a relationship with a man who might not be what he seems at first.
As time goes it's clear to her as she endures abuse and ends up supporting him while he's out of work, that she needs to leave him. Having been alienated from her few friends and acquaintances she sees a ray of hope when she meets a woman claiming to be her grandmother. Though she knows it is not possible, under pressure from her boyfriend she carries on with the farce to claim financial benefits. It all changes and turns sinister when her boyfriend is found dead after her grandmother claims to have taken care of it. She goes on the run with Nae and is off the grid while the police start their investigation and search for her too.
What I loved - The quiet, unassuming manner of the police investigation. They go about their investigation in a logical, dramatic way. It's almost like watching a synchronised swimming session. Of course, what I most enjoyed was how I wasn't able to guess who the killer was. The pages flew especially as there was so much suspense surrounding all the key characters we met. A little glimpse into the Japanese nightlife and how the police detectives go about their work was the heart of the story. The best part was the professor who connected the dots before the police could and how he single-handedly solved the case.
This is one of the cosy whodunnits I enjoyed and you will too as it's a nicely placed quick read you can finish in a couple of reads.
Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino’s best loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a case where hidden history, and an impossible crime, are linked by nearly invisible threads in surprising ways.
The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. But his death was no accident—Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He'd been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoka Shimauchi, but when detectives from the Homicide Squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. She's taken time off from work, clothes and effects are missing from the apartment she shared. And when the detectives learn that she was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume that she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight—she was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared, forcing Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.
But if Sonoko didn't kill her abusive lover, then who did? A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, the detectives investigate other threads of association—an eccentric artist, who was Sonoko's mother figure after her own single mother passed; and an older woman who is the owner of a hostess club. And how is Sonoko continuing to stay one step ahead of the police searching for her? It's up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder- which, surprisingly, connect to his own traumatic past—to unravel not merely the facts of the crime but the helix that ties them all together.