There are several things that don’t sit right with him – several alibis are suspicious, and motives are hard to establish with any conviction. When the woman who the pawnshop owner was visiting the day he died is found dead in her apartment, in what looks like suicide, Sasagaki again feels something is amiss. However, the police focus on the wellbeing of her daughter Yukiho, newly orphaned, who leaves everyone who meets her with a distinct sense that she is older than her 12 years. This book was absolutely brilliant! It is so much different from the other crime thrillers I’ve read; here, we follow the mystery and its effects for a long period of time. This novel takes place over a span of two decades and follows the lives of two people connected solely because of the crime and detective Sasagaki’s obsession with uncovering the truth, as he believes the crime has caused a ripple effect which impacts the lives of people even after 20 long years. It had a unique, brilliantly crafted and intricate story-line. This was my second book by Keigo Higashino, after Devotion of Suspect X that I absolutely loved. One thing I noticed in his books that make them exceptional is that the mystery is not about who committed the crime but rather, how the crime was committed and the possible motivation behind it. Despite this, if you’re familiar with other books of Higashino‘s in English you might find yourself frustrated by certain aspects here. For a start, the story is episodic in nature, perhaps due to the fact the original was serialised in a literary magazine. This leaves us grasping for links between chapters, which don’t become apparent until half way through. The timeline can be a struggle as well, with references to computer technology, video games, baseball and Japanese current affairs dropped in to hint at when the action is occurring. While you might be familiar with the bursting of the Japanese asset price bubble, or Super Mario Brothers, most of us probably don’t know when the Hanshin Tigers broke their title drought, or when the findings of the inquest into Minamata disease were handed down. Higashino leaves behind the increasingly weighty cases of Detective Galileo ( A Midsummer’s Equation, 2016, etc.) for an even more daunting stand-alone that traces the fallout of an unsolved murder through nearly two decades.

Journey Under the Midnight Sun - Wikipedia

There never was a sun in the sky over me. It’s always night. But not dark. I had something in place of the sun. Maybe not as bright, but enough for me. Enough so I was able to live in the night like it was day…” If you make a habit out of it, it's nothing. The important thing is to make sure that you don't collect too much stuff. I keep throwing out all the extra stuff. If you do that, cleaning up isn't hard at all. As long as you have thirty minutes, you can get it done. One week is ten thousand eighty minutes, so if you just put in some effort for thirty minutes, you can spend about ten thousand minutes in comfort. But if you don't put in the thirty minutes of effort, you'll have to spend ten thousand minutes in discomfort.” Anyway, if you're familiar with the novel "Gone with the Wind".. You will somehow knew about these two very flawed people I'm referring to. :)This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. It’s more difficult to create the problem than to solve it. All the person trying to solve the problem has to do is always respect the problem’s creator.” A book that ends with more questions than answers, and that’s ironic because it’s a mystery novel. For most mystery novel readers, the fun comes from unwrapping the mystery, it comes from solving the crime and the puzzle with the detective. There’s never a ta-da! moment in Journey, no big reveal even at the very end, only small, sharp pinches that suggest the truth is actually worse than and beyond the limits of our imagination.

Byakuyako (2006) - MyDramaList

Many of the reviewers here have talked about the disappointing ending to this novel, and while I agree, I don't think UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN is meant to be read as a traditional mystery, ending in all the suspects gathered in the drawing room waiting to hear the great detective's conclusions. To me it was a fascinating look at the passage of time, and how people move through different chapters of their lives. Like THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X, it's not really a whodunit or a whydunit: it's more like glimpses of people's lives over time, the way we really see our friends and acquaintances -- with imperfect knowledge, in only one context, and always from the outside looking in. he presented me with a mathematical conundrum,” he said. “It’s a famous one, the P = NP problem. Basically, it asks whether it’s more difficult to think of the solution to a problem yourself or to ascertain if someone else’s answer to the same problem is correct.”Too many characters with confusing names. Many of the characters are non returning. They do their bit in their story then never reappear. Born in Osaka, he started writing novels while still working as an engineer at Nippon Denso Co.　(presently DENSO). He won the Edogawa Rampo Prize, which is awarded annually to the finest mystery work, in 1985 for the novel Hōkago (After School) at age 27. Subsequently, he quit his job and started a career as a writer in Tokyo. In 1999, he won the Mystery Writers of Japan Inc award for the novel Himitsu (The Secret), which was translated into English by Kerim Yasar and published by Vertical under the title of Naoko in 2004. In 2006, he won the 134th Naoki Prize for Yōgisha X no Kenshin. His novels had been nominated five times before winning with this novel. You’re familiar with the P = NP problem, right?” Yukawa asked from behind him. Ishigami looked around. “You’re referring to the question of whether or not it is as easy to determine the accuracy of another person’s results as it is to solve the problem yourself—or, failing that, how the difference in difficulty compares. It’s one of the questions the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a prize to solve.”

UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN | Kirkus Reviews

Journey under the midnight Sun is mixture of obsession, voyeurism, love, trust, betrayal and has been narrated so vividly. Just imagine all the parameters combined with mystery what would be the impact. She was pretty, he had to admit, with very delicate features. But there was something else, too. There are thorns in her eyes—that was the only way he could express it. For a moment, he thought she might have felt left out because he spoke to her friend first and not to her, but as she smiled, he realised the thorns were always there. A true lady would never have eyes like that.”

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this is a drama with a story that i doubt i will ever find it again, i love it as much as i hate it, and i have this kind of mixed up feeling while watching it, what they did is really bad and wrong but i really want them to be together and happy bcuz they suffered enough for their whole life and their relationship is really beautiful (exclude the crime). The sun had set. Night had come to the city. How easy it would be if everything went dark, and the world ended right here, right now. What a relief it would be.” This book starts off with the finding of a murdered man. The killer is not found. Thereafter it moves forward in time, exploring the development of the murdered man's son and his mistress's daughter. It does so through the eyes of other characters, including the detective that investigated the initial case, through a number of side stories.

Journey Under the Midnight Sun - Kindle edition by Higashino

You know how the sun rises and sets at a certain time each day? In the same way, all of our lives have a day and night. But it's not set like it is with the sun. Some people walk forever in the sunlight, and some people have to walk through the darkest night their whole lives. When people talk about being afraid, what they're afraid of is that their sun will set. That the light they love will fade.” The most amazing part of this book is not the plot itself! Instead, try concentrating on the details that Higashino-sensei gave you (e.g., what kind of books did the officer saw when he entered the boy's room for the first time at the beginning of the fiction?) and you would be able to solve many quizzes that were not revealed by the author... While I had started reading the book knowing fully well that this is not going to be a mystery in the traditional sense (Higashino simply enjoys breaking all the ‘rules’ that we associate with a mystery), the book left me literally gasping for breath as I raced towards the end with the Detective. Was I eager to see their fall? Yes. Oh God, yes! I wanted them to be destroyed, killed, ruined, burnt alive, thrown to wolves, fed to the grinder, etc. And I also wanted to see just what height they can reach taking this dark road until someone comes with the thunder. And all along, I also felt very-very sorry for them, as I also started joining the dots inside my mind to understand exactly how they had started this walk. Very intelligent story about the personal development of a young but rotten girl to a society high-flyer with the help of a shadow. Who more and more lives in the computers he is so masterly using for creating mayhem and personal gain. A voyage of 19 years from budding criminals to adult ones, giving the readers a great insight into the development of Japanese society from the 1980ies on. A society that is depending more and more on always higher sophisticated computers.A complicated mystery about many people involved and related to a series of murder cases and crimes. The store manager of the "Kirihara" pawnshop, Isamu knows a lot of secrets about the Kirihara family. He later approaches Ryoji as a broker of unauthorized game software.