The Yiddish Policemen's Union
The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon, 2007 Hugo Winner - 2008 Premise: In the final days of Sitka before Reversion, a murder is committed, buried, and investigated. So I went into this book trying to give it a fair shake, even though the only thing I remember about reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (by the same author) was that I thought it was overrated. Now the main thing I'm going to remember about this book is that it's tedious. It's an alternate-history murder mystery that wants to be in a hardboiled style, but the writing only occasionally comes within a glimpse of the cleverness of the greats in that genre. Mostly it's just too precious. One perceptive Goodreads review put it very well: "If he can come up with three ornamental ways to portray one thing, he includes all three of them in the book." And that person said they enjoyed the book. To be fair, I can currently only read books in short bursts, and this book was no...