Five Decembers
In November 1941 Honolulu police detective Joe McGrady is sent to investigate a brutal double murder that leads him first to Wake Island and then to Hong Kong. Days after he arrives, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and closes the Pacific behind him. What began as a homicide case becomes a story of internment, forced service, and a love affair conducted under occupation. James Kestrel writes with the atmosphere of classic noir but the scope of a war novel, and the book won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. It reads as both a mystery and a meditation on how much a life can be reshaped by circumstance.
What you might want to know about Five Decembers
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A Honolulu detective chases a killer to Hong Kong on the eve of Pearl Harbor and finds himself trapped in the war for the next five years.
It is both. The book opens as a police procedural and then, once Pearl Harbor is attacked, becomes a wartime survival story, with the original murder case still driving the plot.
Yes. Five Decembers won the Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, one of the highest honors in crime fiction.
Five Decembers was written by James Kestrel, published in 2021 by Hard Case Crime.
Five Decembers is 429 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Five Decembers takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Five Decembers is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
