At the risk of being called a philistine, I found that keeping a running list of all the characters featured in Keigo Higashino’s SILENT PARADE did the trick for me. There are so many Japanese names here that it was difficult to tell who was who. My list helped me to separate the good guys from the bad guys and the characters from the past vs. those from the present, making the reading experience so much more worthwhile for me.

The book’s central theme revolves around a cold case that may not have been a coincidence. Local restaurant owners Yutaro and Machiko Namiki seemingly had it all. That is, until the day their beautiful and gifted teenage daughter, Saori, failed to come home from school one day. They did everything they could to find her, a true community effort based on her popularity, but she has not been seen alive since.

"Higashino has more than a few tricky plot twists up his sleeve that will completely change the circumstances with which Galileo is forced to work."

Three years later, Yutaro and Machiko are contacted by a man from the Shizuoka Prefectural Police. The skeletal remains of Saori have been positively identified. The police are confident that a certain suspect is the guilty party, but unfortunately they only have turned up circumstantial evidence against him and cannot proceed with an arrest.

What they have been able to trace is a potential pattern of missing young women. It turns out that 23 years earlier, 12-year-old Yuna Motohashi also vanished suddenly without any clues regarding her fate. A man named Kanichi Hasunuma was put on trial but was found innocent due to lack of evidence. It is this same individual, much older but just as deadly and untouchable, who the police are eyeing for Saori’s abduction and murder.

It is at this point that the great Detective Galileo is called upon. His methods have drawn literary comparison to those of Sherlock Holmes; his unique style and level of success in solving seemingly impossible crimes are needed now more than ever. But don’t count on an unchallenging ride for Galileo. Higashino has more than a few tricky plot twists up his sleeve that will completely change the circumstances with which Galileo is forced to work. The ending of SILENT PARADE is extremely clever and unpredictable.