Journey under the midnight sun by Keigo Higashino…..
First things first…. Have a bone of contention to pick with the translator!!
When he translated the novel from Japanese why oh why couldn’t he change the names of the characters!…
When it was a smaller novel of around 200 pages it was easy to progress but this one is a 600 page behemoth with so many characters that you get so confused!..
Coming to the bone (of contention that is!!); So I primary confusion is that the names of the characters are so similar!.. Just one or two words and it’s a complete different person (or was it a place!??)…
To add to the fact that most of the names are gender neutral!… Many times until the character gets a feminine tone I still don’t know whether it’s a gal or a guy!!..
Then there are big time warps!… one moment you are reading about the present and the next chapter is something which happens three or ten or even twenty years later! (Don’t worry it’s not a big spoiler!! But actually a helper!!)..
With so many characters, though the actual main ones are only the two dark love birds! (Major semi spoiler!!), It gets tedious to get the drift…
But good things do come so After around three hundred pages you get the story!… Then it’s a breeze and the pace is both tolerable and understandable!!…
Though he has been compared to Steig Larsson, the storyline reminds me of a Sidney Sheldon or Jeff Archer’s style!… This was when I found out that the story was actually written in series and finally put together as one piece!… Then it all made sense!…
Coming to the story as such, since it’s Keigo Higashino you can be rest assured that everything is not so direct or straightforward!… You can never tell the murderer (the first one of course!) At least in the first four hundred pages!…
Then when you start getting the dark dark picture you are literally thrown into an amalgamation of computer crimes, stabbings, sexual perversions, grim people with dark pasts!, Adultery galore!, And finally the two missing pieces beauty and the beast of the actual puzzle!….
The title though is so apt….kudos to Keigo for that…..
So if you have lots of time to kill and want to spend that time alone in the company of a book then this one is for you…
You can tell me Aarigato later!…or not!!
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