Physics professor Manabu Yukawa's weirdness, science-mindedness and commitment to coaxing rather than directing the police toward answers have been his calling card throughout the Detective Galileo books (The Devotion of Suspect X; Salvation of a Saint; A Midsummer's Equation), and these qualities abound in Keigo Higashino's first-rate Silent Parade, the fourth title in the series. As the novel begins, the Shizuoka Prefectural Police have just found the remains of Saori Namiki in the ruins of a "trash house" that recently caught fire; an examination of her bones determines that a skull fracture was the cause of death for the young woman, who disappeared three years earlier, when she was 19.
The other remains found at the house were those of the old woman who lived there, whose son, Kanichi Hasunuma, was a suspect in a case that the Tokyo police worked 23 years earlier involving the murder of a 12-year-old girl. Now chief inspector, Kusanagi approaches this new case hell-bent on forging a connection between the two--a task made all the more difficult when Hasunuma is murdered.
Higashino (Malice; Newcomer; Under the Midnight Sun) nimbly employs a wandering point of view to let readers access the minds of key characters, from the Tokyo detectives who lean on the bemused Detective Galileo to the individuals who loved the two young murder victims and whose opportunities to seek revenge are of particular interest to the police. Silent Parade is a twist-and-turn mystery in which, for some characters, Detective Galileo is an enigma unto himself. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer