Silent Parade

This was a pretty tight mystery and does raise the interesting question of: how do you deal with people who've almost certainly committed a crime but in a way that the justice system is unable to convict them?

For me, the standout part of this mystery is how it bounces off Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. There are plot elements that are very similar to the conclusion of that book (though it does not explicitly spoil that book), and if you've read it before, it feels like the book invites you to decide whether the mystery is going to play out in the same way or not, and if it will be different, in what ways? The book explicitly names Orient Express, Agatha Christie, and Hercule Poirot at least once each, so it's quite certainly trying to draw a connection to that.

Spoilery thoughts about that, spoiling both this book's ending as well as Murder on the Orient Express: The whole cast of suspects all had a hand in killing the victim on the Orient Express, and each of them had their own different reasons for wanting him dead. In this book, it's something similar where Hasunuma has made an enemy essentially out of this little clique of villagers frequenting Namiki-ya. But knowing Higashino, I felt like he wouldn't do a straight copy & paste from Orient Express, and would find a way to pull the rug out from under our feet. And indeed he does. I was satisfied with the ending overall. I was a little worried that we'd even remotely touch on the gross bits about possible sexual assaults (and one involving a child), but luckily we didn't. The only part that made me remotely uncomfortable was where Rumi confessed that Hasunuma blackmailed her into sleeping with him. *BARF*. Anyway, overall the mystery kept me going and I enjoyed it all.

Higashino remains my most read author in 2023 and for good reason. Would absolutely be reading more.