6-13-07, 9:30 am

The Yiddish Policemen's Union By Michael Chabon New York, HarperCollins, 2007.

In Michael Chabon's latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Meyer Landsman is a member of the Yiddish Policemen's Union by virtue of being a homicide detective at Sitka Central, in the Provisional Jewish Settlement in Sitka, Alaska. And he's at the end of his rope.

His sister, whom he loved dearly, has just died in an airplane accident. His ex-wife and former partner has been promoted to be his boss. Alcohol has replaced food for his nourishment. To top it off, a neighbor, whom he hadn't known from Adam, has just been shot. And they're pounding on his door in the wee hours to get him to check it out.

Sitka, Alaska is a real place. But Chabon has transformed it into a sanctuary for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany more than 60 years ago. In this counterfactual history, the US government did allow millions of Jews to come to America. As a result millions were spared the Nazi holocaust.

But they were sent to this provisional paradise in southeastern Alaska, where they hold a tenuous refugee status, which now in 2007 is about to be revoked. The US government is going to dissolve Sitka's provisional status in two months, and rumor has it that only about 40% of the people are going to get permanent resident status, or green cards. Maybe even fewer.

And because in this story Israel was never established in 1948 – the Zionists were expelled by the Arabs – there is no homeland to return to. Some are moving to Canada. Others to Argentina, Madagascar, Russia, who knows where. All they know is that they are no longer welcome in America.

Sitka is no paradise. While the province has retained relative autonomy from overt outside interference, various religious sects compete for power, sometimes violently. Russian and Jewish gangsters also battle for supremacy. The competition for land and resources with local indigenous peoples has sometimes turned violent as well, fostering decades of animosity between the Tlinglits and the Jews.

Now that this island of Jewish refugees is about to revert to US control and many thousands forcibly expelled, there is no more use for a Jewish police department. Landsman, his ex-wife commander orders, has two months to close out his cases, no ifs, ands or buts. If you can't find the perpetrator, find someone you can pin the crime on. No new cases either.

But Landsman isn't satisfied with this order. His latest murder victim is unidentified, but appears to have been an avid chess player who was addicted to heroin. Something about this mysterious person compels Landsman to dig further, contrary to orders. Chabon's tale takes us with Landsman, a self-described cynical Jew, and his zealous half-Indian, half-Jewish partner, Berko Shemets, through the fictive city of Sitka in search of the identity of this latest unfortunate.

In the process, they uncover startling secrets about the city's history and the future of the Jewish people.

Chabon's magnificent story is a well-crafted postmodern tale about the search for the elusive fixity of religious and national identity. Like all well-done detective fiction, this novel is about the alienated, cynical individual's search for personal redemption, as well as a gradual uncovering of the powerful forces behind a seemingly isolated and insignificant event.

What sets Chabon apart from and above most other writers in this genre, however, is his great skill with language. Within a few sentences, I often found myself by turns surprised, laughing, and moved to tears. Chabon's descriptive turns of phrase are unmatched. Consider this 1940s noiresque imagery: 'Night is an orange smear over Sitka, a compound of fog and the light of sodium-vapor streetlamps. It has the translucence of onions cooked in chicken fat.'

Or, in a moment of vulnerability and intimacy between Landsman and his partner Berko, Chabon describes Berko's realization of Landsman's emotional pain thus: 'Berko notes also that Landsman has been crying; one eyebrow shoots up, hangs suspended, drifts down like a tablecloth settling onto a table.'

This may be one of the best novels of 2007, and is certainly a worthwhile read on a free weekend spent curled up on the couch.