Five Decembers

Product Information

The author's note at the end suggests that there were at least 60,000 words cut out from the final draft. James Kestrel's ambitious debut Five Decembers definitely earns it though with a sweeping tale that takes you from pre-Pearl Harbor Dec. Where else are the stakes higher and the players so desperate, pushed to extremes in matters that are life or death? Spanning the entirety of World War II, Five Decembers is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.

But here, the attacks on Tokyo in 1945 are barely mentioned- some explosions in the distance, Sachi runs away because she saw McGrady kill someone. Still, experiences on the Japanese side of the war, where much of the plot takes place, will be decidedly foreign to most. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

At one point Joe finds himself in Kowloon and he takes the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island and then onward and upward, travelling on the funicular railway to the summit of The Peak. GR's Listopia is not complete (as of March 2022) and the most current lists of publication can be found at Wikipedia or the Publisher's own Official Site. Rather, it's the story of a civilian -a local Honolulu police detective given the most unsolvable case ever -a murder out in the hills that barely makes sense. The style of writing is so simple that several times while reading descriptions, I was jolted out of the scene.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.There are only two things I didn’t like, but they greatly interfered with my enjoyment of the story.

The police captain makes it clear that, although McGrady has lived on the island for five years since his military discharge, he’s still an outsider and hasn’t earned any trust yet.It all starts (although it doesn't end there) in pre-war Honolulu in the days leading up to that one fateful day when the bombers appeared over the lush Hawaiian skies and awakened a sleeping giant. On a whim I requested it on Edelweiss+ and I don’t know what gods are “for my unconquerable [reading] soul,” but Hard Case Crime was kind enough to grant my request. The author has created a very likeable character in Joe McGrady and when you finish the book, you leave Joe with regret, wondering what his life will be like after. The novel’s title, Five Decembers, is a clever reference that the story will move from crime thriller to war epic after the Japanese launch their offensive across Asia.

No book that I was reading during that time held my interest and I was getting more and more frustrated! What I can say is that this is a novel built on making readers feel like they’re in a particular time and place, and James Kestrel does a superior job of that. You want to turn the pages as quickly as possible to find out what happens next, but you also want to take your time and soak in the vivid imagery of Hawaii that the author gives us and also take our time when he describes the vast death, destruction, and impact the war inflicted.I found some of the twists a bit hard to swallow (particularly the one that covers the long stretch in the middle) but I have to admit Kestrel makes it all worth your while at the end.