Book Club Guide

Five Decembers

by James Kestrel · 2021 · Mystery & Thriller

Key themes

A murder investigation that becomes a five-year odyssey across the Pacific War
Honolulu and Hong Kong in November 1941 — the world about to change completely
Obsession with a case as a form of survival through catastrophe

About this book

In November 1941, a Honolulu police detective investigates a brutal double murder that leads him to Hong Kong just as the Pacific war begins — and the case, and the war, will consume the next five years of his life. Kestrel's Edgar Award-winning novel is an epic crime story that becomes a war novel, following one detective across the entire Pacific theatre in pursuit of a case he cannot let go.

Published in 2021, Five Decembers won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. James Kestrel is a pen name for Jonathan Moore, who has written several other crime novels under his own name.

Discussion questions

The novel begins as a conventional detective story — a double murder in Honolulu — and then the Pacific war begins. How does Kestrel manage this tonal and scope shift, from procedural to war epic?
The detective's pursuit of the case takes him to Hong Kong just before its fall to Japan, and the consequences span years. How does Kestrel develop the relationship between personal obsession and historical catastrophe?
The novel covers an enormous span of time and geography for a crime novel. What does this scale achieve — and does the mystery element remain central, or does it become something else?
Kestrel writes with hardboiled economy even as the scope expands dramatically. How does this prose style serve material that spans years and continents?
Five Decembers won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. What does it do that distinguishes it — and how does it use the crime genre's structures to tell what is essentially a war story?