Five Decembers (2021) by James Kestrel

I bought this book on a whim but was slightly reluctant about starting a noir crime thriller with a length of over 400 pages. Noir crime thrillers in my experience are best when they are lean and stripped of padding (like the Parker thrillers by Donald Westlake or the Quarry series by Max Allan Collins). The mistake was mine though in assuming that Five Decembers was just a crime thriller, as it is far more than simply that.

Five Decembers is simultaneously an action-packed period-set noir crime thriller, a murder mystery police procedural, a hard-edged unflinching view of war, a tragic love story, a multi-cultural adventure, and an espionage-infused cat and mouse chase around the globe. In a word, this book is genuinely EPIC!

It’s 1941 and Honolulu cop Joe McGrady is getting his first big case after five years in the police department, investigating a particularly brutal double murder in which one of the victims is the nephew of the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The other is a Japanese woman, whose involvement provides the clues that point toward the shadowy suspect, John Smith. McGrady’s captain sends him to Hong Kong in his pursuit of Smith and that’s where what has been a reasonably straightforward police procedural up to this point (albeit with a unique Pacific flair) goes off the rails.

The morning after McGrady arrives in Hong Kong, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, throwing the city and the detective’s life into chaos as Japanese forces invade the city. In an attempt to throw McGrady off his trail, he is framed by John Smith for a rape and eventually ends up in a Japanese prison where he is rescued by Takahashi Kansei, the dead woman’s pacifist uncle in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now we have a personal vendetta element that is introduced—this man wants revenge on whoever murdered his niece and will use McGrady as his instrument of retribution, even though it exposes the uncle to great threat and potential reprisal. 

Thus, begins a protracted 3-year stint with McGrady as a fugitive living in the Kansei home while Japan becomes the target of America's military might. Here is where a genuinely effective and heart-breaking love story emerges which only adds another layer of pathos to a story that is already honestly justifying its emotional investment.

Despite its scope and epic scale, the author keeps everything grounded and McGrady is an excellent protagonist. He also effectively keeps the noir element alive throughout with his wry observations and gumshoe diligence to finding his man, no matter the personal cost. The spare prose is delivered in fantastic clips of eloquence and brutal matter of fact violence, with evocative passages like this occurring frequently:

He was in his element. A dim basement full of rotting files. It was all fine and good to tie a man to a chair and beat him for answers, but cases got solved in rooms like this.

On a final note, James Kestrel is the pseudonym for an author who chooses to remain unknown with several sources citing him as being an established 'name' author. All I know is that the man can write! Five Decembers is one of the finest novels I have read in a very long time and I give it my highest recommendation. 

Reviewed by Steve Carroll