Swann’s War

We’re deep into the Second World War, and Archie Swann—the police officer on Fourth Cliff, a fishing island off the Massachusetts coast—is fighting in the Pacific theater. But his wife, Mary Beth, herself a cop trained by the Boston Police Department, has stepped into his position. While Archie was beloved, Mary Beth is loathed, largely because of her gender, and the easiest of tasks is a struggle. While the island has traditionally seen little crime—settling fights between drunk fishermen and resolving domestic disputes seemed to be the bulk of the work—things have changed under Mary Beth’s watch. The body of a soldier, who lived in a camp for Italian POWs on the island, is hauled up from the sea by fishermen, a murder that creates unrest among both islanders and prisoners. When that murder is followed by others, Mary Beth, whose supports are a doctor who is untrained as a coroner and a deputy who is intellectually disabled, turns to the only real help she can find: organized crime from the mainland. But the real story here is the internal one: Mary Beth’s loneliness, her longing for Archie, her need to always maintain a tough outer shell, her battle against feeling like a failure. Novels about women in the War have blossomed in the past few years, but few have the grittiness, honesty, and authenticity in emotion, language, and detail of Swann’s War.