Transcendence Within’s Reviews > Five Decembers > Status Update

FINALLY MAKING PROGRESS ON THIS AGAIN. Such a detail-oriented plot and I've forgotten all of the details so I am disoriented. Nazis are bad. Nazi cops are even worse. The way Kestrel constructs a scene is so damn interesting. Probably the most entertaining book I've read in a while. Something something themes of good people in bad situations and mapping it onto World War Two. Have to hide this book's cover when home.

This thing is written with such brutal starkness — every word feels like it's being chiseled into rock, or that Kestrel (the alias for crime novelist Jonathan Moore) is mining for every word. But the mining is fruitful: he finds jewels. Minimal effort is put in to give staggeringly complex portrayals of the men, what they do, and what is done to them. "A tall stack of fat-clad muscle with a buzz cut" is pretty great.