Set over 5 days in an imaginary American city in 1922, this extraordinary noir-esque crime novel is dense, thick with character and plot twists, and is extremely satisfying and memorable. Francis Spufford must be one of the world's most inventive and versatile writers, and also one of our more eccentric. Channeling Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but in an America where the variety of smallpox that the Europeans bought was a less fatal strain than our history describes, so that the Native Americans dominate some states, is a convincing and plausible alternative history.