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Peacekeeping
Mischa Berlinski
Atlantic, $27.99
Tough Florida cop Terry White has lost everything in the GFC, and has come to Haiti to help train police. There, he befriends a Johel Celestin, a lawyer turned politician who must fight an election against a powerful and corrupt senator. Terry is having an affair with Nadia, a singer and Johel's wife; while his own wife Kay comes to the country to assist with Johel's campaign. If that sounds a bit soapy, Mischa Berlinski's Peacekeeping opens out into much more troubling and ambitious terrain, a big-picture novel with a dispassionate eye that may put readers in mind of Graham Greene. It's a story of poverty and power, sex and politics, infested with the dark absurdities and moral ambiguity of life in one of the poorest nations on the planet.