The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon is a literary writer who likes to experiment with genre fiction. His last book was a Sherlock pastiche, and he's edited a book of short stories that are heavy on plot. His magnum opus (so far) is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, an big epic about superhero comic books. I've read four of his books, including that one, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, and now The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

The book is a noir mystery set in, of all places, Alaska, but it's not the Alaska we know today. Chabon's ingeniously clever device is to create an alternate history, placing the Jewish diaspora in Sitka. It seems that in the early days of World War II it was suggested that Jewish refugees would be repatriated to Alaska. This was opposed by the Alaskan congressman. Chabon exacts literary revenge by having the congressman run over by a cab in Washington. In Chabon's Alaska Sitka is a two-million strong community of Yiddish speakers. But in this alternate history Israel doesn't exist, and some radical Jews want to reclaim Jerusalem.

The result is something like Raymond Chandler filtered through Jackie Mason. The classic noir hero is a police detective, Meyer Landsman, who is down and out, a drunk living in a fleabag hotel. He is awakened one morning by the clerk, who has discovered a dead body in one of the rooms, checked in under the name of a long-dead chess grandmaster. Landsman and his partner, a half-Jew half-Tlingit Indian, follow clues that lead them to a sect of Hasidim who run the syndicate. By the time it's all over, there is a conspiracy that involves the coming of the messiah and the Dome of the Rock.

Chabon is a gifted wordsmith, capable of creating similes that take the breath away. Consider this description of the Rebbe, who is both a spiritual leader and a capo de tutti capo: "Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined dessert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped him together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man." Or this description a woman snoring: "It has a double-reeded hum, the bumblee continuo of Mongolian throat-singing. It has the slow grandeur of a whale's respiration."

The text has the delightful rhythms and syntax of Yiddish. It is understood that the characters are speaking to each other in that language (English is referred to as "American") and though Chabon is writing in English, he has sprinkled in some venerable Yiddish words like "ganef," "shammes," and "noz."

As much fun as this book is, the plot does run off the rails at the end. I think the ambition exceeds the grasp, as the solution goes way beyond Landsman's world into secret government cover-ups. I'm still not quite sure what happened. I've read that Joel and Ethan Coen will be making this into a film--I hope they keep what is good and jettison that which is not so hot.