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A very few books each year are like people: some are born great, some are made great, and some have greatest thrust upon them. In FIVE DECEMBERS all three forces are at work. The author is clearly a gifted storyteller with a layered and nuanced story to tell and a strong command of language. He has also been helped immensely by an experienced editing team who knew very well what were the strengths of his story, where to excise bits, and where to leave, and perhaps even embellish, certain elements of the narrative. And not least, FIVE DECEMBERS has earned the praise of an impressive list of supporters, including such literary luminaries as Denis Lehane, Megan Abbott, Elly Griffiths, Stephen King, and James Patterson. And finally, the book is a finalist for a forthcoming MWA Edgar Award. The result is one of the finest novels of 2021.
Honolulu, December 1941: police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to solve a gruesome double murder on the eve of World War Two. A young man has been found hanging upside-down in a remote dairy shed, naked, his body split open by a knife, and dead for a day or more.
After reporting his find by phone McGrady returns to the shed to find a gunman lying in wait. A fight ensues, and when the dust has cleared McGrady is alive; the other man isn't. Entering the shed the detective investigates the murder scene more closely. A nearby cot attracts his attention, and he discovers underneath some clothing the body of a second victim, a young Asian woman, bound and with her throat slit.
Back in Honolulu the male is identified as Henry K. Willard, the nephew of Admiral Kimmel, the ranking officer at Pearl Harbor. The victim had been in Honolulu preparing to study at the university there. Kimmel is determined to solve his nephew's death, and McGrady is given a free hand to go wherever the evidence leads.
The trail leads to Hong Kong and eventually to Japan itself, and McGrady doggedly follows it, just in time to be caught up in the war in the Pacific. Endangering her own life, the sister of the woman killed helps hide the detective until he is caught by the Japanese and imprisoned. It is only when the war ends that McGrady is freed. He makes his way back to Honolulu to solve the few missing pieces of the puzzle. His quest will ultimately lead him back to Japan in an effort to restore some meaning to his epic journey,
The writing in FIVE DECEMBERS is superb in the way that only original prose can be. Witness the military pathologist reflecting on the implications of the bodies he's just examined:
The Colonel was stepping in from his adjacent office. He'd changed into a crisper shirt. He had on a bright butcher's apron, never worn until now. He looked like he was working hard at one task. Holding down his breakfast. No one gets out of the service without a few scrapes, but McGrady had dodged one particular burden. He'd never had to give bad news to a flag officer. He knew how it would work. Blame would spread as far as it would go. Like pouring a can of paint down a hill. Most of it would end up at the bottom, but it would stain everything it touched on the way down.
Epic in structure and scope (thankfully the editors talked Kestrel into shortening his narrative of McGrady's incarceration period during the war) Five Decembers manages to be evocative without being too saccharine. The author clearly drew on his own cultural experiences in that part of the world, which adds to the compelling nature of the writing. FIVE DECEMBERS is a layered, hard-boiled tale that is part Dashiell Hammett, part James Michener, a sweeping saga of love, hate, innocence and evil, consummately told.
§ In addition to being a reviewer with over six hundred reviews to his credit, Jim Napier is the author of Legacy and Ridley's War, in the British-based Colin McDermott mystery series.
Reviewed by Jim Napier, December 2021
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