This twist in 'Silent Parade' h
It me like a slow, inevitable clap — Higashino stages a town’s moral pressure-cooker
and then pulls the rug out from under the reader. The surface plot is straightforward: Saori, an aspiring singer, disappears and her remains are later
Found; Kanichi Hasunuma, a man long suspected in an earlier child murder, floats back into town and taunts the family, then is discovered dead during the town parade. That setup makes
you expect a single, obvious vigilante-killer, but the
novel refuses to be that tidy. What actually flips the script is the layered, collaborative nature of the crime. Several people who loved or protected Saori — her father, a childhood friend, even people tied to her music career — craft a
revenge plan to trap or expose Hasunuma during the parade; their motives are blunt and heartbreak-fueled. But when Yukawa starts assembling the forensic logic, details show the plan went off the rails and the person who delivered the fatal blow (and
the chain of who helped, who backed out, and who lied) is not just one neat, lone avenger. The reveal is equal parts procedural puzzle and ethical thicket — the how and the who are both satisfying and painfully human. Reading it, I kept flipping between admiration for Higashino’s plotting and sorrow for characters pushed to extremes; it’s the kind of twist that doesn’t just surprise you, it makes you squirm with sympathy.