Review

This is the best crime novel I have read. Joe McGrady, a retired military officer, joins the Honolulu police department and his first case is a brutal double murder. It is in the late fall of 1940 and McGrady begins his investigation. For the next five years he travels across the Pacific, as World War II develops, and is in Hong Kong and Japan - often in prison. And near death his determination to solve the murders brings the readers fascinating views into Asian, and particularly Japanese, culture life. He lives with a Japanese family for much of the war; falls in love with the daughter of his host, learns the language and explores the culture. Kestrel ties together the crime and its solution with the war and those involved at the highest levels in an accurate portrayal of these fascinating events. The crime and its solution is a story within the novel and the author is as good as anyone at creating doubt and confusion, tying the characters involved together across the Pacific and bringing often surprises.The crime part of this novel is really fun, but it is surrounded by the novel itself, which is first-rate. At the same time the novel opens new views of Japan during the war, including the existence of senior people in Japan who opposed the war from the beginning. The picture of Japan after the fire-bombing starts and the two devastating atomic bombs is the first I have read since John Hersey's "Hiroshima" and, perhaps more revealing. Kestrel knows how to bring personalities and characters alive and fit into the overall plot. McGrady is a complicated man. Tough and hard-nosed, yet compassionate and loving. The Japanese in the story are beautifully portrayed and the reader sees so clearly how culture can affect personality and when people from two different cultures interact, relationships can be very complex It is history, crime, travel, a love story - all wonderfully written and a "page-turner".

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