Five Decembers

Winner of the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Novel

Nominated for Best Novel in the 2022 Edgar Awards

Nominated for Best Thriller in the 2022 Barry Awards

Finalist for the Hammett Prize 2021

Five Decembers is a gripping thriller, a staggering portrait of war, and a heartbreaking love story, as unforgettable as All the Light We Cannot See.

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. The trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn't know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.

This extraordinary novel is so much more than just a gripping crime story—it's a story of survival against all odds, of love and loss, and the human cost of war. Spanning the entirety of World War II, Five Decembers is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.

'Read this book for its palpitating story, its perfect emotional and physical detailing and, most of all, for its unforgettable conjuring of a steamy quicksilver world that will be new to almost every reader.' - Pico Iyer

'War, imprisonment, torture, romance... The novel has an almost operatic symmetry, and Kestrel turns a beautiful phrase.' - New York Times