This was not at all what I expected. It turned out to be a glorified murder mystery written in crisp prose but with outlandish similes & metaphors (Landaman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket." Landman's "the funny little sorehead in the last panel of a comic strip with the black lily of an exploded cigar wilting in his puss.") The story is set in Sitka, Alaska, a federal reserve set aside for Jewish refugees that, after 60 years, is about to revert to the state, leaving the non-citizen Jews in legal limbo. ("It's a strange time to be a Jew" is a refrain echoing through the book.) In this context, a Jewish police homicide detective, whose personal life is in a shambles, discovers a formerly promising rabbi's son murderred, and his investigation leads him into a tangled web of deceit. A peculiar book, but not in the ways I expected. ( )