Silent Parade by Keigo Higashino

Silent Parade by Keigo Higashino
Translator: Giles Murray
Narrator: David Shih
Series: Detective Galileo #8
Published by Tantor Media on December 14, 2021 (first published October 11, 2018)
Source: Library
Genres: Mystery
Length: 12 hrs 32 mins
Pages: 352
Format: Audiobook
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Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino’s best loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a complex and challenging mystery—several murders, decades apart, with no solid evidence.

A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned out house. There’s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family. And this isn’t the first time he’s been suspected of the murder of a young girl, nearly twenty years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.

The neighborhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for an annual street festival, featuring a parade with entries from around Tokyo and Japan. During the parade, the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. His death is suspiciously convenient but the people with all the best motives have rock solid alibis. CI Kusanagi turns once again to his college friend, Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, to help solve the string of impossible to prove murders.

SIlent Parade is the eighth in the Detective Galileo series, not all of which have been translated into English. It’s the fourth that I’ve read, but it works perfectly fine as a stand-alone. The story begins shortly after the third anniversary of Saori Namiki’s disappearance when she was nineteen. A decrepit house has burned down in Tokyo and her remains were identified in the rubble. Chief Inspector Kusanagi and his team are assigned the case because of a curious connection they have to the chief suspect. But it’s not Saori’s murder that’s the focus. When her presumed killer is let free, he ends up dead and it’s that murder the police are trying to solve.

There are tons of characters, which can get a little confusing in the audio occasionally, but they each have their roles and are important to the plot. The plot itself is twisty and turny and some things are obvious and some are not what you expect. It’s not a quick-moving story, it’s concerned with details and timelines, not motives – it’s clear why he was killed, just not how. And then we get the moment that makes us look at everyone’s actions just a little differently. I like how the author takes our expectations of how a mystery should go and turns them around.

• Surprising twist at the end
• Interesting look at Japanese culture and legal system
• Sherlock-ish amateur detective, but who is actually likable