Five Decembers

Five Decembers was a hard-boiled mystery in the style of Dashiell Hammett that begins just before Pearl Harbor and then was set in Japan throughout the rest of the war. 

In addition to the mystery itself was an improbable love story between the American detective and a Japanese woman who harbored and hid him behind enemy lines. Wonderfully written, it was the book I quite literally couldn’t put down.

This book encompassed so many different genres and yet still grabbed my attention from page one to the end—it’s a long read, too. It’s a World War II historical epic, an edge-of-your-seat crime novel, and a romance.

Kestrel does a brilliant job evoking Hawaii right before Pearl Harbor and Japan during the war, and really made me care about the main character, Honolulu police Detective Joe McGrady, and his efforts to both survive the war and solve a gruesome set of murders.

Winner of the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Novel, James Kestrel’s Five Decembers tells a gripping story of survival that spans the entirety of World War II.

It’s got it all, man, and it is a helluva fantastic read. The story begins in Honolulu, Hawaii, and follows detective Joe McGrady on the trail of a murder that takes him far from home and far from the woman he loves.

Before he knows it, he’s in the middle of the war, in Japan, no less, and nothing for him will ever be the same.

Don’t walk for this one, run… show more.