Two months have nearly passed since the sudden death of Higashino Keigo. Published as fans mourned, the newest entry in his Galileo series, "Eternal Memory," has already surpassed 630,000 copies in cumulative print runs.
As the book goes back to press again and again, attention has turned once more to "The Devotion of Suspect X," the biggest hit of both the series and Higashino's career. Yuria Bekku, who spent years as the Higashino editor at Bungeishunju and handled the serialization of the novel, described how it came to be.
She recalled reading the four short stories that became "Detective Galileo" when she took over the author's work at a fiction magazine. "It's interesting... but how many readers will accept it?" she remembered thinking.
The series has now passed 17 million copies, but at the time few believed a mystery built on specialized scientific knowledge could sell. That was about seven years before "The Devotion of Suspect X" was published in 2005 and became a runaway bestseller.
The book edition of "Detective Galileo" came out in May 1998. The stories, built around a genius physicist and shaped by Higashino's own background in the sciences, were well received and reprinted, though by the standards of what followed it was a quiet start.
A Turn in a Few Months
The wind shifted within months. Beginning with "Himitsu," his first hit, Higashino produced one bestseller after another and became one of Japan's most popular authors, as if the decade and more of poor sales since his debut had never happened. He wrote "Journey Under the Midnight Sun," "Kataomoi," "The Letter" and "Phantom Night" in quick succession, and was shortlisted for the Naoki Prize five times in about five years.
The serialization of "The Devotion of Suspect X" began in 2003, as he entered that first fertile period.
“There was a strong request from the editorial department for the third book in the series to be a full-length novel. The next Galileo had to be a long one. Higashino agreed readily.”Yuria Bekku, former Bungeishunju editor