If I hadn’t been reading this book for a book club, I would have DNFed it long before the end. I wanted to like it. Truly, I did. The blurb seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would interest me: an alternate universe where Jews after the Holocaust have settled in Alaska instead of Israel, and there has been (dun-dun-DUN) a murder! I was expecting an action-comedy. Instead I got a plodding, overwritten, small-down detective story in which none of the characters are especially sympathetic. (Except maybe the protagonists ex-wife / new boss – I have a soft spot for her having to deal with all the shit the protagonist is stirring up.) Despite the stakes getting dramatically raised around the 75% mark, and an event that would have Michael Bay-esque action scenes in any other book, the entire way through I just kept wanting to shout, “would you get to the point already and stop with all the flowery metaphors?!” Clearly, I’m not the book’s intended audience, and just as clearly, I didn’t realize that before I started to read it.