The Yiddish Policemen's Union

It's hard to improve on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but Michael Chabon tries admirably in his long awaited follow-up to THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. While the prose may not quite match that of his earlier work and the ending is a bit disappointing, Chabon's latest is somewhat more accessible to the masses. It's a bit of a detective story mixed with a pungent commentary on the politics of Judaism and the State of Israel. Peter Riegert adeptly handles the numerous accents and inflections necessary to convey the life of Jewish refugees in a post-Holocaust homeland. Riegert not only uses timbre effectively, he does so while creating distinct and memorable personalities for Chabon's diverse cast. D.J.S. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

March 5, 2007


Reviewed by
Jess Walter
They are the "frozen Chosen," two million people living, dying and kvetching in Sitka, Alaska, the temporary homeland established for displaced World War II Jews in Chabon's ambitious and entertaining new novel. It is—deep breath now—a murder-mystery speculative-history Jewish-identity noir chess thriller, so perhaps it's no surprise that, in the back half of the book, the moving parts become unwieldy; Chabon is juggling narrative chainsaws here.
The novel begins—the same way that Philip Roth launched The Plot Against America
—with a fascinating historical footnote: what if, as Franklin Roosevelt proposed on the eve of World War II, a temporary Jewish settlement had been established on the Alaska panhandle? Roosevelt's plan went nowhere, but Chabon runs the idea into the present, back-loading his tale with a haunting history. Israel failed to get a foothold in the Middle East, and since the Sitka solution was only temporary, Alaskan Jews are about to lose their cold homeland. The book's timeless refrain: "It's a strange time to be a Jew."
Into this world arrives Chabon's Chandler-ready hero, Meyer Landsman, a drunken rogue cop who wakes in a flophouse to find that one of his neighbors has been murdered. With his half-Tlingit, half-Jewish partner and his sexy-tough boss, who happens also to be his ex-wife, Landsman investigates a fascinating underworld of Orthodox black-hat gangs and crime-lord rabbis. Chabon's "Alyeska" is an act of fearless imagination, more evidence of the soaring talent of his previous genre-blender, the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
.
Eventually, however, Chabon's homage to noir feels heavy-handed, with too many scenes of snappy tough-guy banter and too much of the kind of elaborate thriller plotting that requires long explanations and offscreen conspiracies.
Chabon can certainly write noir—or whatever else he wants; his recent Sherlock Holmes novel, The Final Solution
, was lovely, even if the New York Times Book Review
sniffed its surprise that the mystery novel would "appeal to the real writer." Should any other snobs mistake Chabon for anything less than a real writer, this book offers new evidence of his peerless storytelling and style. Characters have skin "as pale as a page of commentary" and rough voices "like an onion rolling in a bucket." It's a solid performance that would have been even better with a little more Yiddish and a little less police. (May)

Jess Walter was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for
The Zero and the winner of the 2006 Edgar Award for best novel for
Citizen Vince.

Starred review from March 1, 2007
What's washed-up cop Meyer Landsman to do when a heroin-addicted, chess-crazed denizen of the dump where he lives gets plugged in the head? He's going to find the killer, and to that end he calls in his partner (and cousin) Berko Shemets, a bear of a man who's also half-Tlingit because, you see, this is]Alaska? In this wildly inventive blackest of black comedies, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chabon ("The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay") imagines that after World War II Roosevelt decreed the yet-to-be-50th state the homeland of the Jews. Years have passed, and the Jews have settled in very nicely, thank you, re-creating the aura of the Mitteleuropa they've lostthough the black-hatted, ultra-orthodox Bobovers turn out to be real thugs. The meddling of our two boys leads them straight to powerful and dangerous Bobover leader Rebbe Gold and eventually to a plot aimed at the reclamation of Israel. It also leads them into plenty of hot water with the top brass, including their new bossMeyer's ex-wife, Bina. Raucous, acidulous, decidedly impolite, yet stylistically arresting, this book is bloody brilliantand if it's way over the top, that's what makes Chabon such a great writer. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 1/07.]Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.