
It is a book that will toy with the very definition of the concept of 'spoilers:' it begins with a few hours in our main characters' daily routines, then quickly jumps into an emotional scene that results in murder. Higashino’s novels have more movie and TV series adaptations than Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum, and as many as Michael Crichton.īoth unusual and familiar, The Devotion of Suspect X is an unassuming mystery with an astonishing approach. Made into a motion picture in Japan, The Devotion of Suspect X spent 4 weeks at the top of the box office and was the third highest‐grossing film of the year.

It won the prestigious Naoki Prize for Best Novel- the Japanese equivalent of the National Book Award and the Man Booker Prize. The Devotion of Suspect X was the second highest selling book in all of Japan- fiction or nonfiction-the year it was published, with over 800,000 copies sold.

His novels had been nominated five times before winning with this novel. In 2006, he won the 134th Naoki Prize for Yōgisha X no Kenshin. In 1999, he won the Mystery Writers of Japan Inc award for the novel Himitsu (The Secret), which was translated into English by Kerim Yasar and published by Vertical under the title of Naoko in 2004.

Subsequently, he quit his job and started a career as a writer in Tokyo.

He won the Edogawa Rampo Prize, which is awarded annually to the finest mystery work, in 1985 for the novel Hōkago (After School) at age 27. Keigo Higashino ( 東野 圭吾) is one of the most popular and biggest selling fiction authors in Japan-as well known as James Patterson, Dean Koontz or Tom Clancy are in the USA.īorn in Osaka, he started writing novels while still working as an engineer at Nippon Denso Co. (presently DENSO).
