Justin Partridge’s Reviews > Five Decembers > Status Update

“If he died by someone else’s bullet, there’d be no justice to it.”

I truly don’t know how but this thing has jumped from Great to Truly Incredible in its final movements. It’s got so many moving parts and twists but never feels distant or too smart for me. It’s just a towering achievement of a book. I can’t wait for y’all to read it.

I truly don’t understand how the shifts in this book are so good. It’s covering such a huge swath of time but it never feels labored or that it’s working too hard to justify it. It’s really a marvel.

Oh man this thing has fully jumped off now and introduced its major connecting thread to Pearl Harbor and I’m like giddy to keep going with it.

This thing is really starting to cook now.

Still going at this one which is still revealing a terse poeticism that always surprises me. It’s also making great use of the period and how crimes were tackled back then. Very, very curious as to where this one is headed.

This is shockingly intimate for a hard-boiled detective story.

The good folks at HCC were kind enough to send me this. I got a digital ARC of it from their PR dept. which I started/loved but I’m loving it even more now that I’ve got the printed one.

It’s so wholly unlike all the other HCCs so far but also completely true to the line’s spirit and hard-boiled cadence. It’s got a juicy Murder mystery at the center but the scope and period detailing make it even better.