REVIEW: Confessions - Kanae Minato

• Year first released:  2014
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0316200921
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Little, Brown and Company
• My rating (out of 5):  4

10 or 11 years ago, I read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It was a fantastic mystery (regarding a stolen gemstone) told from the perspectives of 11 different people involved in the affair. The first - and longest - part of the book sets up the entire scenario and introduces us to all the key characters. From there, we're given more and more details, ideas, and points of view from each of the other characters, until the final part, which ties everything together and brings us the ultimate solution.

Minato's much more recent Confessions has a similar setup:

Part 1 introduces us to the underlying crime (this time, the tragic, heartless murder of a 4-year-old girl) which propels the story as a whole. Each of the subsequent parts then show us a different character's perspective on the matter, before arriving at its downright chilling ending.

Unlike The Moonstone, though, the flow to Minato's story is constantly pulling us forward. We're actually presented most of the details - and even the culprit - by the end of Part 1 - the first 50 pages of the book. Then, rather than revisit the same depressing scene over and over again with each new character's perspective, we're shown the aftermath that each character faces in response to the initial murder.

It's a deliberate, clever approach that works on several levels. Once you realize that you already know the answer to the crime only a fifth of the way into the book, you will inevitably wonder, Where could the story go from here? Isn't it already finished? Indeed, it is not - not by a long shot.

The layers that each new character adds to the story unfold in a highly intricate fashion, leaving us to wonder what is really at the heart behind everything. The facts we thought we knew become distorted. We discover that the motives aren't what we had originally been told. And, importantly, we may not have seen the last of the crimes... [no spoilers, though]

We might say that Confessions is a mystery in reverse. Rather than the book merely being about trying to solve the murder at the beginning, we already know who the murderer is and how the deed was performed. What matters here is the spiral, the after effects, all of which eventually point to the book's highly effective, disturbing, shocking final page. (Pleasingly, the final twist of the book is on the very last page - you do yourself a disservice if you stop reading the book at any point before then.)

Full of deep characters, a plot that twists with almost every page, and an intriguing look at justice - what it really is and looks like, how it is achieved, who is responsible for enacting it, etc. - Confessions is one of the best mysteries I've come across. I'll definitely be diving into Minato's next book, Penance, in due time.