Suspicion
This is a super short book written by Japanese author Seichō Matsumoto. It follows a journalist named Akitani who is reporting on the death of a man named Shirikawa. Shirikawa and his wife plunged into a mass of water while driving in harsh rainy conditions, his wife Onizuka survives, and stands to gain a fortune from insurance policies taken out in advance of this.
Really what the book gets into is more about motivations behind crimes, the defending and prosecuting parties in court and how they are building their cases, and the media’s sensationalism around a high profile case, casting blame without actually processing facts. Akitani is partially to blame for that last part, since as a journalist he was reporting on the accident, but framed his articles and stories in a way that made the wife Onizuka look like she planned and staged the death of her husband for the payout.
A key aspect of the book is understanding character witnesses and witnesses of the incident. Akitani and the public are so sure Onizuka is guilty of a crime, but the lawyers aren’t even sure there is a crime yet. Just because a person’s past behavior exists, or because they said something offhand, doesn’t mean what they say is what they did. A witness that saw the car is so sure at first that he saw a man in the passenger seat not driving, but upon further examination he ends up doubting himself, it turned out the man was witnessing it but he was also distracted and on the phone while watching. The lawyers relates this back to Akitani, showing how different they think about witness testimony and how they pick it apart:
“Psychology and Interrogation Technique, by Albert Hellwig, director of a German district court. Here’s what he writes in the section on witness psychology. If one’s attention is focused on a particular phenomenon, it will necessarily be distracted from any others simultaneously occurring. This makes it generally impossible both to look and listen carefully at the same time. An individual who tends to focus on visual elements will usually neglect the act of listening. Similarly, hose who focus on auditory impressions will find it impossible to consider the visual details of a situation. “
It’s a really good and quick read, and I wasn’t quite expecting the ending. I think it was refreshing that it was less about evidence gathering and deep investigation, but more about dealing with the media that are jumping to conclusions not based on hard facts and and presenting against circumstantial evidence. Definitely worth at least one read, and I definitely will be reading more of his stories.