Salvation of a Saint

A man is found dead in his house, he was poisoned. The main suspect is his wife. But she has a cast-iron alibi and was far away when the poisoning happened. Nevertheless, the Tokyo police detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi – together with their friend Yukawa, a physics professor – try to figure out how she could have killed her husband without being on site.

Salvation of a Saint is an unusual crime novel insofar as its focus is more on "how was the crime done" than on "who had done it", with a cleverly constructed case of an (almost) perfect crime. Unfortunately, this leads to a very slow moving story, without any action or suspense, that I found rather boring.

Quotes from the book

"If we can't have children, there's no point to us being married."

"Let me get this straight", she said. "You don't need a woman who can't bear your children. So you'll throw me out and switch to someone who can?"

So women were nothing more to him than baby factories!

"That's what I like about you. You never defy expectations. You always say exactly what I think you're going to say." - "Your point being that I'm an idiot."

"Well, unlike your late husband, he hates children. Their 'lack of the capacity for reason' stresses him out."

"You again? You must be going head to head with every high school girl in the country in terms of your phone bill this month."

"If she had done something, she might've left a trace. But she killed him by doing nothing."