The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino

January 22, 2020

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino

After committing a robbery and having their getaway car break down, three amateur criminals hide out in an abandoned general store. To their surprise, envelopes begin dropping through the mail slot, most of them stating a problem and requesting advice, but some thanking the store owner for advice given in the past.  The three wannabe crooks decide to answer the letters, first as a joke, and then in an earnest attempt to actually be of some help.

The plot (if you can call it a plot) focuses on an old fashioned general store that has been closed for decades, and a nearby orphanage that all of the characters are connected to in some way.  The store exists in a kind of time warp – inside the store, it’s 30 years in the past, while time outside the store runs normally.  Rather than a straightforward novel format, the story consists of a series of inter-connected vignettes, often transitioning to another character's story with little or no explanation.  It’s a quick read and overall optimistic with a certain charm, but a lot of it felt like the author wanted to write about some of his favorite things, like the Beatles.  One of my complaints is that there is no real ending – the reader ends up with the three guys sitting around the general store looking at each other with their eyes twinkling – what is that supposed to mean?  I understand that the author is a well-known mystery writer in Japan, and that this is his first effort outside the mystery genre.  Maybe it was the translation that made it seem clunky.