Invisible Helix

Detective Galileo, Book 5

By: Keigo Higashino

Narrated by: David Shih

The body of a young man is found floating in Tokyo Bay. But his death was no accident—Ryota Uetsuji was shot. He'd been reported missing the week before by his live-in girlfriend Sonoka Shimauchi, but when detectives from the Homicide Squad go to interview her, she is nowhere to be found. And when the detectives learn that she was the victim of domestic abuse, they presume that she was the killer. But her alibi is airtight—she was hours away in Kyoto when Ryota disappeared, forcing Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi to restart their investigation.

But if Sonoko didn't kill her abusive lover, then who did? A thin thread of association leads them to their old consultant, brilliant physicist Manabu Yukawa, known in the department as "Detective Galileo." With Sonoko still missing, the detectives investigate other threads of association—an eccentric artist, who was Sonoko's mother figure after her own single mother passed; and an older woman who is the owner of a hostess club. And how is Sonoko continuing to stay one step ahead of the police searching for her? It's up to Galileo to find the nearly hidden threads of history and coincidence that connect the people around the bloody murder—which, surprisingly, connect to his own traumatic past—to unravel not merely the facts of the crime but the helix that ties them all together.

©2021 Keigo Higashino; translation copyright 2024 by Giles Murray (P)2025 Tantor Media

A very engrossing story

This book is less about brilliantly solving a mystery and more about telling an engrossing story.

cerebral mystery

Absolutely love this writer. His books are amazing. I Read this in two days, couldn’t stop it is so bingeable.

Intricate plot

I read spy and mystery novels, and Higashino is in a class by himself. He is a master at weaving a web of plot threads.
I downgraded the performance because some novels use more than one actor for the voices. At first it’s difficult to distinguish among the characters.
The story is outstanding!

Very fast paced book

Book 5 of Manabu Yukawa series ends just when we finally get some personal details about Detective Galileo. I hope there will be more in the future.

The plot was ok

This book was Very poorly written and translated, IMO. I lost interest about half way through.