He turns to his friend Yukawa, another genius who works in the physics department at a local university and sometimes helps the police with their cases. But the police have no one else to suspect, and Detective Kusanagi of the Edogawa police keeps poking at the problems in Yasuko’s story and questioning the puzzling circumstances of the murder. By the time they identify it as Togashi and come knocking on Yasuko’s door, the mother and daughter have credible alibis and there is no solid evidence linking them to Togashi’s death. Soon after, the police find a body with its face smashed in and fingerprints burned off.

Ishigami immediately begins instructing Yasuko and Misato on dealing with the incriminating evidence and makes plans for disposing of Togashi’s body. Although he’s too shy to exchange more than a few words with her and sometimes can’t even make eye contact, he always buys his lunch from the bento shop where she works just so that he can see her.

Yasuko is shocked that he figured out what happened and wants to help, but she knows that Ishigami – a reclusive mathematical genius – has always had a thing for her. Mother and daughter are both prepared to turn themselves in when their enigmatic neighbour, Ishigami, calls and offers to help them dispose of the body. In the struggle that follows, Yasuko defends her daughter by strangling Togashi while Misato holds him down. In their small apartment, he brags that they will never be rid of him, prompting a terrified Misato to attack him. Afterwards, he’d repeatedly harassed Yasuko and her daughter Misato, until Yasuko changed jobs, homes and Misato’s school in an effort to get away from him. She’d divorced him after he became an abusive drunk who took her money for gambling. Yasuko is a single mother living a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, when her ex-husband Togashi walks back into her life. Published: First published in Japanese in 2005 this translation published in 2011 |a Police |z Japan |0 |z Tokyo |0 |v Fiction.

When he shows up one day to extort money from her, threatening both her and her teenaged daughter Misato, the situation quickly escalates into violence and Togashi ends up dead on her apartment floor. |a Yasuko Hanaoka is a divorced, single mother who thought she had finally escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. |a The devotion of suspect X / |c Keigo Higashino translated by Alexander O.

The devotion of suspect x series