Michael Chabon‘s The Yiddish Policemen‘s Union follows Detective Meyer Landsman‘s investigation of a chess player‘s murder in Sitka, Alaska. The fictional city of Sitka is a temporary settlement given by the US government to the Jewish people after Israel fails in 1948. But with its sixty-year lease coming to an end, the city slips into a frenzy of uncertainty. Armed with a Yiddish dictionary and an uncanny gift for colorful descriptions, Chabon creates a city that feels real in every way, rife with its own wonderfully imaginative idiosyncrasies.

Landsman‘s investigation, fueled by cigarettes and stiff drinks, introduces him to a slew of Russian gangsters, Jewish chess prodigies, and corrupt US officials. Following his nose through the seedy underside of the city, Landsman steps on the toes of some of Sitka‘s many unsavory residents as he wanders head on into the center of an explosive international conspiracy. All the while, the chronically unlucky policeman struggles to make peace with his ex wife turned boss and their painful past. Through the richness of his characters and the complexity of their relationships with one another, Chabon elegantly articulates the relative nature of right or wrong.