Keigo Higashino's Equation of Midsummer is one of the author's Galileo series. The novel was published in 2011. We are talking about a Japanese version of the film made in 2013.
Keigo Higashino's creations are staggering, with more than 90 novels and about 70 novels imported and published in Japan.
With such a huge production capacity, is there any regularity behind it?
It can be said that the core plot elements in Keigo Higashino's novel follow the general structure of the universal formula of the speculative work, so that his work can load the living materials of life into the universal formula, and can quickly generate a story line and chain of a novel, which is much faster and more convenient than groping in the dark and making up a hammer in the east.
Below, we will copy the universal formula of the work of reasoning again as follows:
The first is the trouble-seeking type (no one plans). It refers to an unrelated small factor, which has nothing to do with the main case, but in the accidental time, for accidental reasons, it just happens to bump into the scope of the subject case, thus being taken as the precursor of the main case and inducing misunderstanding. For example, in Sherlock Holmes's first novel, "The Study of Blood Words", the hostess once instigated her son to beat the deceased because of her shameless behavior of hating the deceased, and was considered a natural murderer by the police.
The second is the blame type (someone planned). There are two types of this.
First: shirk type. The mechanism is as follows: 1. Prove that you are not at the scene and have no time to commit the crime. In Poirot's "Evil in the Sun" and "Massacre on the Nile", the perpetrators are trying to create a false appearance that they are not on the scene. 2. Move the time of the crime. For example, in Poirot's "Diamond of Blood", the murderer has already killed the old man, but through the manual rope, he controls the items in the house and screams with toys to achieve the illusion that the deceased is dead. The passage of time can effectively evade suspicion. 3. The purpose of pretending to be a victim is also to change the time of the crime and cause a change in the time of the crime. This is the most profound kind of blindfold. If you pretend to be a dead person, in fact, people are not dead. One of the best recognized works in Christie's novel, "No One Survives", writes about a person who was killed, who is actually the real perpetrator.
Second: the pass-through type. This type is relatively simple, that is, the murderer finds a substitute for the dead ghost to guide attention. Here we divide into two templates: 1. Passively becoming a substitute ghost. In "The Study of Blood Letters", the perpetrator deliberately left a mysterious organization's "blood letter" symbol on the wall to achieve the purpose of diverting attention. 2. Take the initiative to become a substitute ghost. Keigo Higashino is like "The Dedication of Suspect X". People are selfish, why should someone take the initiative to become a substitute ghost? In Keigo Higashino's works, it is reduced to "love", the power of love that makes people willing to dedicate themselves and take responsibility.
The plot mode of "Equation of Midsummer" belongs to the "actively becoming a substitute ghost" type in the "transfer type" in the universal formula. What is interesting is that the two men in this work who compete to replace the dead ghost have exactly the same motivation, both because they fundamentally love a woman, and they do not hesitate to sacrifice themselves and bear the guilt.
The power of women is often displayed in Keigo Higashino's works, and what we glimpse is an extreme expression of love in Japanese culture. This kind of love will even deviate to the level of a perversion, so that in a situation unique to Japanese culture, we can perceive the strangeness and strangeness of this way of expressing love.
In a word, there is a "love equation" in Japanese culture that is difficult for us Chinese culture to understand.
"Equations of Midsummer" begins with the protagonist Yukawa going to the beach to attend a seminar on marine development.
At the seaside, a death soon draws him into an old case of reasoning, which unravels the ultimate mystery of the "love equation" hidden behind human nature.
The deceased was an old policeman who fell off the embankment by the sea, but wore slippers to rule out the possibility of missing his foot, and he had carbon monoxide poisoning and then signs of falling to his death, all of which proved that he was thrown under the seawall after he died prematurely. In a word, he was killed. So, who was his killer?
As a result, Yukawa set his sights on the family of the owner of a local inn rented by the old policeman. It was discovered that the old policeman was also involved in a case that occurred fifteen years ago, and the murderer of that case was the daughter of the current hotel family.
The novel thus links a case fifteen years ago to a current one, and the murderer's motive is to protect the innkeeper's wife and her daughter.
It can be seen that this is a substitute ghost for the purpose of "dedication".
Let's first look at the "substitute ghost" fifteen years ago. The source of the matter is that the boss lady was very beautiful when she was young, there were many suitors, she fell in love with a man, but "make the king have a husband", the two are difficult to enter the marriage, so this relationship can only cut off the knot, but she is pregnant with the man's child and gave birth to a daughter. Theoretically, the former man could only be said to be her lover.
Fifteen years ago, an unemployed wandering woman discovered the secret of the boss lady's child, took a photo, and went to threaten the teenage girl. The girl was furious and killed the woman she was threatening with a knife.
In Higashino Keigo's pen, the violent murder of girls is a fairly common source of murder, which may be the identity of girls as weak people, making them vulnerable to bullying, and more reasonable plot foundation, so Higashino Keigo's novels often use this as the original traction to unveil a dark curtain. The motivation for the girl's killing cannot be to be violated, which includes physical aggression and spiritual aggression. The girls in "When the Prayer Ends" typically belong to physical aggression, while the girls in this work "Equations of Midsummer" are undoubtedly mental violations.
The girl killed someone, but it was her biological father who was responsible. Fifteen years ago, it was this biological father who took on the duty of killing people out of his loving human nature, thus saving the girl's future life.
Fifteen years later, the old policeman who was investigating the case realized the suspicion of "dropping the bag" of the case, so he followed him all the way to the hotel of the seaside hostess to further clarify the reason, and it was also here that he violated a dangerous taboo, which brought about the disaster of killing.
Because the pursuit of the old police is likely to expose the truth of the girl's murder that year, in this way, the sacrifice efforts of the boss's wife's lover's "for the dead ghost" will be abandoned, and the girl's life will be ruined.
The arrival of the old policeman makes the boss lady's family like a bird of fright, and according to the template of the universal formula of the speculative novel, the old policeman can only be killed.
The old policeman was killed this time by the husband of the boss lady, the girl's stepfather. Here again we see a spirit of "devotion" out of love. This is also the main reason why the second motive for killing in this work is like the plot of "The Dedication of Suspect X".
The girl's stepfather's motive for killing was to believe that the appearance of the old policeman would definitely destroy the peaceful life of their family. Although he had long known that his wife's past love history was complicated and that the child was not born to him, he felt that being able to gain the favor of the most beautiful woman of the year was the most perfect happiness in his life. This kind of generous love, placed in Japanese culture, may have a seamless feeling, but from the perspective of human common feelings, it still feels a sense of partial deviation, but his inner strength of selfless dedication to his wife and daughter does show the purest and highest form of love.
It is just that his bulldozer of "killing Buddhas in encountering Buddhas and killing ghosts and killing ghosts" for the purpose of love sweeps away any way of getting in the way, which once again shows an extreme psychological state reflected by Japanese culture in the expression of love. In fact, the old policeman was not motivated at all to find out the truth and bring the girl to justice, but only out of the inner entanglement accumulated when he participated in the investigation. The girl's stepfather immediately began his interlocking murder plan, and with the help of the hand of the little boy who was on vacation at his house, he cleverly instigated the little boy to block the exit of the chimney, so that the toxic gas of carbon monoxide produced by the chimney filled the room, and then lured the old policeman into the house, poisoning the policeman and dying. After that, the body is thrown away to create the illusion of a footfall.
After the incident, the girl's stepfather single-handedly took on the responsibility of killing. In this way, he completes the defense of the truth of the girl's murder, and thus expresses his "dedication" to the woman he loves.
Relatively speaking, the actions of the girl's stepfather are more noble and great than those of the biological father, if his motives for killing are aside.
The stepfather, purely for the purpose of love, for an unrelated life, spared no effort to kill a foreign policeman who might threaten tranquility, and from the moment he made this choice, it meant that he had taken his own life. The girl's biological father only assumed a responsibility after the case occurred, he did not actually kill, compared with the two, the girl's stepfather paid a spirit and action of the strength is far greater than the biological father's choice.
However, what makes people feel confused and incomprehensible in the movie is that this desperate love of the stepfather contains a terrible crazy power, which occurs too easily, too casually, as long as it blocks anything that loves, it must be eradicated. This reminds us that "When the Prayer Ends" is set up in the same way. The father in the work, once he sees people and things that threaten his daughter's future, whether this person will reveal the truth or not, he must kill this person completely, and finally even for his daughter, he will not hesitate to maintain his daughter's safety through his own death. In fact, the father's behavior in "When the Prayer Ends" is the "two-in-one" of the girl's biological father and stepfather in "The Equation of Midsummer", on the one hand, killing any external threats, on the other hand, using his own flesh to protect the girl's safety.
"The Equation of Midsummer" shows the secret of human nature that is accustomed to in Keigo Higashino's works, but all these interpretations can only be manifested by loading into the universal formula of reasoning works. In this way, we just hope to use the test of the universal formula of the speculative works to see a little secret of Keigo Kiyotono's work.