Book Review: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon - Page 2

But this imaginative reconstruction of a Jewish Alaska is merely the backdrop for a intricately plotted mystery, which is the second layer in Chabon’s multifaceted novel. Down-and-out detective Meyer Landsman finds a dead body in his skid-row hotel, and is determined to track down the murderer, despite warnings from higher-ups that this is a case that he should not investigate.

The clues he assembles are odd ones. Chess pieces are arrayed in a peculiar endgame position near the body. The deceased lived under different aliases, all drawn from famous chess players in the past. And the victim’s life is as puzzling as his death – some saw him as a pathetic junkie, others as the potential leader of a messianic cult.

The third layer of the plot brings us into the realm of the The Da Vinci Code, where conspiracies and secretive organizations and two millennia of arcane history emerge as provocative undercurrents in the story. Yet Chabon brings all these elements together, seamlessly telling his tale on several different levels. And, as always with Chabon, the entire book is meticulously written. Chabon writes with great intelligence and creativity, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, even sentence by sentence.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a significant work by one of America’s finest novelists. In the coming weeks, a number of major authors -- Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, and others -- are releasing books. In short, the competition for best novel this spring will be as hotly contested as the NBA playoffs. But Chabon has made the competition all the stiffer with this brilliant and rich fiction, a whimsical whodunit with a double dose of literary flare.

Article Author: Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia is a writer and musician. He is the author of Delta Blues, The History of Jazz and, most recently, The Birth (and Death) of the Cool.

Visit Ted Gioia's author page — Ted Gioia's Blog