A Midsummer's Equation by Keigo HigashinoMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Higashino Keigo has overreached himself in "Midsummer's Equation," the third novel in the Galileo series (in Japan it is Part 6, but that is because he has also written three volumes of short stories which are of a rather different character compared to the novels). The setting is nice, for once not in Tokyo but in Hari Cove, a sleepy former resort town. Mineral deposits have been found offshore and Dr Yukawa has been invited by the company seeking to develop the find as an independent expert (a bit strange because he is a physicist and not a mineralogist or biologist). He has to testify at hearings to be held with a group of local environmentalists who are against the development as it may destroy the seascape. That night, the only other guest staying at the decaying inn he has selected (refusing the accommodation offered by the company as he wants to remain independent) dies in what seems an accident (a fall on the rocks). Soon it comes out that the man in fact died from carbon monoxide poisoning and was a former policeman from Tokyo. As appears gradually, he was looking into an old crime in which the owners of the inn and their daughter (now a fierce environmentalist) are implicated. So cops from Tokyo get involved, including Kusanagi who has frequent telephone contact with Yukawa to get his take on things.
Now the problems of this book:
- The story of the mining company and the environmentalists has been set up with a lot of fanfare (and a lot of space) but is halfway discarded like a bag of refuse - the reader expects a link with the main plot, but it has just been "filling."
- There are too many persons in the novel, from environmentalists (friends of the daughter) to the 12-year old nephew of the inn keepers and the large number of policemen, local and from Tokyo; and in combination with Higashino's rather rudimentary characterization skills, this leads to confusion. The novel "sprawls" too much, there is no clear focus.
- I won't spoil the fun by revealing details about the old and the new murder, but only say that the motivation is implausible - on the one hand the extent of altruism of one person is unbelievable, and on the other hand the circumstance lying at the base of all crimes would only be considered a problem in an old-fashioned 19th century novel, not in our modern times (also not in Japan).
So from The Devotion of Suspect X to Salvation of a Saint to the present novel, there is a decided sliding scale in the Galileo series.
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