Finger

My recent bedtime reading is The Red Finger (赤い指) by Keigo Higashino (東野圭吾).

I must say I had the experience of a few other novels by this Japanese author of detective fictions and am not quite impressed. To my surprise, this one is - by whatever standard - exceptionally enjoyable. The story is simple but brilliantly written.

And, for that, Vivian took my recommendation and read it over the weekend - but she was obviously thinking otherwise.

"There's nothing to guess," my wife said.

"Quite true, but that's beyond the point," I tried to sooth her, "Although everyone knows who killed the little girl right from the beginning, it remains enjoyable to see how Kaga Kiyouitirou (加賀恭一郎), the detective in the story, analyzed the clues, made the deduction, and arrived at the conclusion. In a traditional detective story, it is the logical process being important - not the result."

For the same reason, for example, we learn a surgery not by seeing the patient post-operatively, but by joining the surgeon in the theatre.