The Invisible Helix (Keigo Higashino)

The word Helix is defined as the shape of a spiral, a long curved line that moves round and round away from a central point. It comes from a Greek word that means “twisted or curved”. I’ll come back to this later.

I learnt in November that the next Higashino book is ready and would be released by mid December. From that time, I have been waiting expectantly to lay my hands on this book. It had to reach me from literally across the world and i could finally read it. (The last time i waited for a book release like this was for The Half Blood Prince by JKRowling.) While this is a typical Higashino, i am not sure if it justifies the waiting and the excitement.

The body of a young man is found floating in the sea with a bullet wound. His live in partner is missing and seems to have skipped town before the body was found, before even the time of death. Reports from neighbours indicate it was an abusive relationship - she certainly has the motive to murder him but she has a water tight alibi. Also where is she and what is she afraid of if she did not do it? One of the last calls the victim made was to the owner of a hostess bar. Far fetched it may seem, but does she have any link to the crime? What is in the past that links to the present?

A typical Higashino plot, where a crime is committed but the reason for the crime is buried in the past long gone. Nothing is as it seems and there are laters to be unpeeled before you can make sense of the various pieces of information that keeps getting accumulated. A hand made doll, a desperate mother, a gun that cannot be traced, a children’s book writer. By the end, all pieces fall in place and while as humans we want all secrets revealed and the truth to be told, sometimes we take desperate measures because we don’t want to know the truth. 

This book also explores Manabu Yukawa aka Detective Galileo’s personal life and there is a thread that connects him to the murder.  This is where we felt the plot loses steam. The connection is tenuous at best, and contrived at worst. It seems an attempt to humanise Yukawa and bring in a personal stake in solving the mystery where none was needed. It does not add any richness and in fact dilutes it. There could have been further exploration of the motivations of Hidemi Nagishi and the actions she took. There was a lot to unpack there but it was hurriedly finished in a chapter (this part also felt like a throwback to Memoirs of a Geisha - the practice of taking a mistress seems the same though now having a slightly modern approach). In fact, it felt to us that the theme of children abandoned by birth mothers since they did not have the wherewithals to bring them up was overused in this book. An exploration of Chief Inspector Kusanagi and his association with the hostess club could also have given the book more depth.

As for the name Invisible Helix, while it seems to hint at the twisted or curved nature of relationships that govern us, where nothing is as it seems and life is not a straight line path. However, that too, does not fit as well. Overall a decent read, but not the mindblowing one we expected from a much awaited Higashino novel.