{"id":5608,"date":"2024-05-13T00:15:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T00:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/?p=5608"},"modified":"2024-05-13T00:15:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T00:15:17","slug":"five-decembers-by-james-kestrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/five-decembers-by-james-kestrel\/","title":{"rendered":"<B>Five Decembers<\/b> by James Kestrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/57522883-five-decembers\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1703943861l\/57522883._SX98_.jpg\" alt=\"Five Decembers\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/57522883-five-decembers\">Five Decembers<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/21314753.James_Kestrel\">James Kestrel<\/a><br \/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/6500422086\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Joe is a detective for the Honolulu PD right before Pearl Harbor. He&#8217;s assigned to a double murder; the victims are a Japanese girl and an American man, the nephew of the local admiral, in fact. The trail of the murderer leads him on a chase through the Pacific until he reaches Hong Kong. Then December 7 happens. The story follows him through the war years and after. It&#8217;s replete with blood and romance and some very unlikely scenarios.<\/p>\n<p>The book is published by Hard Case Crime and that tells you something. Expect fists, guns, and knives. I like the throwback noir style. The pacing is good, constantly tempting me to read a few more pages. It kept me hooked to the end, but I wasn&#8217;t entirely thrilled with it. The characters and events were so overdone that they were almost more like a superhero comic book than a novel. The bad guys aren&#8217;t just bad, they&#8217;re nazis of superhuman size or sadistic cruelty or both. Joe is inhumanly resourceful and intelligent, learning a foreign language fluently almost overnight and winning every gunfight. The women are all young and beautiful and Joe can have any of them &#8211; but will he? The final scene is both predictable and ridiculous. Still, it&#8217;s action-packed and a fun read.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/12975428-russell-atkinson\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five Decembers by James Kestrel My rating: 4 of 5 stars Joe is a detective for the Honolulu PD right before Pearl Harbor. He&#8217;s assigned to a double murder; the victims are a Japanese girl and an American man, the nephew of the local admiral, in fact. The trail of the murderer leads him on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Five Decembers by James Kestrel - OnWords<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/five-decembers-by-james-kestrel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Five Decembers by James Kestrel - OnWords\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Five Decembers by James Kestrel My rating: 4 of 5 stars Joe is a detective for the Honolulu PD right before Pearl Harbor. 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