The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino

Keigo Higashino’s work has long fascinated me, and when Arti of Ripple Effects suggested we read it together, I was most eager to begin. As usual, I am looking forward to her thoughts, as she is able to pierce to the quick of any work she analyses. (Try reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky with her. Or, Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust! I recommend you look up those posts on her site…)

The thought foremost in my mind, as I read The Final Curtain was how the death of detective Kaga’s mother, in a remote little village of Japan, would tie in with the deaths of a woman and a homeless man in Tokyo…

Those of us who have read of Keigo Higashino’s previous books know him for his work with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. We are aware of his broad shoulders, physical strength, and mental aptitude. In ways similar to many famous detectives in literature (Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, for example) his intellect and insight are incomparable. So, to learn more of his earlier life, particularly of his family, was an appealing angle.

However, once the bodies of a woman who had been strangled, and a homeless man who had been burned in his shelter, were discovered things became quickly complicated. I confess to struggling to remember the characters, as new ones kept turning up, and they all seemed quite similar to my Western mind. Names like Michiko Oshitani, Matsuyo Koshikawa, Yasuyo Miyamito, Yuriko Tajima, and many other characters often had me searching my mind to place them. For me, this is a book which cannot easily be read in conjunction with others, or at a leisurely pace; I would all too quickly be lost in the machinations of the characters.

Yet once I neared the last fourth of the book, I read on at a frenetic pace. For Higashino took us past the plot, into the part I like best about literature: understanding why because we have looked into who the characters are.

We are taken by his expert direction into the lives of children and their parents; in this case we look directly into who Kaga’s mother was, and into another leading character’s father and daughter relationship.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this novel is how Higoshino brought up the idea of comfort in an after life.

Let me tell you something I heard from a friend of mine – she’s a nurse – recently. One of her patients was very close to death. Nonetheless, the thought that she’d be able to watch her children’s lives unfold from beyond the grave filled her with joy. It was a trade-off for which she was quite happy to lose her earthly body. When it’s a matter of their own children, parents are prepared to sacrifice themselves. What do you think?

p. 281

I think that is true, for the most part. But, I also think that many children are prepared to sacrifice themselves for their parents, as The Final Curtain reveals.

(Thanks to Macmillan who sent me an advanced copy of The Final Curtain, although the photograph is one from my local library.)

Find Arti’s review of The Final Curtain here.