A slightly overlooked literary thriller, David Guterson’s award-winning 1994 novel is a thoughtful look at a community torn apart by the legacy of the second world war. Set on a small island off North America in 1954, the novel is part courtroom drama, part intimate portrait of a small town. A German-American fisherman’s boat is found with the owner dead, and a Japanese-American islander is accused of his murder. The two have an uneasy history due to both the war and disputes over land ownership. With a host of wonderful characters, including Ishmael, the editor of the local paper, who lost an arm in the war and is in love with the accused’s wife, the crime is eventually solved in a surprising way.
You should read it: in case you need to refute the oft-made statement that crime can’t be literary; to see how to use flashbacks to help the denouement unfold; to learn about combining beautiful prose with a breathless narrative; and finally to remind yourself what crime writing is really about – loss, and history, and the truth.
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