This is the story of Yasuko Hanoaka, an attractive box-lunch salesgirl who lives with her teenage daughter, Misato. Togashi, the abusive husband Hanoaka divorced, visits her apartment out of the blue, gets into a fight with Misato, and winds up dead. Panicked, the women need help. Enter brilliant mathematician Ishigami, Hanoaka’s neighbor, who has been dogging Hanoaka at the restaurant where she works. She’s helpless and unaware, unlike Ishigami, and other characters who come into her world like Yukawa, a physicist who spars with Ishigami over philosophical approach, and Kusanagi, the detective assigned to the case when a corpse, its face smashed beyond recognition and its fingerprints untraceable, washes up on the shore of the Old Edogawa River.
The obvious suspect is Hanoaka, but her alibi is hard to crack. Kusanagi then turns his attention to Ishigami, enlisting Yukawa in his probe. The friendship between the scientists, who attended university together, confirms Kusanagi’s suspicions; meanwhile, Hanoaka becomes attracted to Kudo, the wealthy owner of a printing company.
What’s compelling about “Devotion’’ is the intricate web of interrelations between the protagonists. Who better to check out Hanoaka’s alibi than her neighbor Ishigami? Who better to suggest that move than Yukawa, Ishigami’s friend? Ishigami, of course, agrees to shadow Hanoaka to deflect attention from him, in a clever version of bait-and-switch. But when the oblivious Hanoaka finds herself drawn to Kudo, a recent widower, the conflicted Ishigami makes a dramatic move, offering himself to the police in a kind of sacrifice. The ending is operatic, particularly after so methodical a buildup. And Ishigami, while not a sympathetic character, always rings true.
