Silent Parade

Keigo Higashino's Silent Parade was full of the plot twists and suspense one expects from the mystery genre, but is a more meandering effort than usual. It was perhaps extended for an extra 50 or so pages longer than necessary, although this case has a more meaningful resolution than A Mid-Summer Equation. Anyway, this time Yukawa, or Detective Galileo, has returned from the United States and is working out of a Tokyo neighborhood or suburb called Kikuno. Whilst there, he reconnects with his old friend, Kusanagi, and his subordinate, Utsumi. As we all know, Yukawa gets dragged into yet another case. This time, it involves a remarkable criminal whose refusal to speak allows him to get away with murder on two occasions. Although this requires suspension of disbelief to accept (but Japanese criminal law is perhaps quite different here), the killer, Hasunuma, eventually becomes a murder victim himself. The identity of the killers is not quite a mystery here, but rather the question of how the murder was done and by whom in a large group leads to some surprising revelations! Throughout his involvement int he case, Yukawa actually became, to some extent, part of the Kikuno community. As a regular at the Namiki-ya restaurant run by the family of one of Hasunuma's victims, one begins to appreciate Yukawa's community involvement and his unique sense of justice. For fans of the series, Yukawa even refers to one of his earlier cases in which he helped Kusanagi close another baffling case. This shows what may be some kind of emotional growth in Yukawa whose presence in the community of Kukuno shows another side.