PEACEKEEPING

Hilary Mantel called "Fieldwork" "a quirky, often brilliant debut, bounced along by limitless energy, its wry tone not detracting from its thoughtfulness." Stephen King said it was "a story that cooks like a mother." Now Mischa Berlinski returns with his second novel, "Peacekeeping," an equally enthralling story of love, politics, and death in the world's most intriguing country.When Terry White, a former deputy sheriff and a failed politician, goes broke in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, he takes a job working for the UN, helping to train the Haitian police. He's sent to the remote town of Jeremie, where there are more coffin makers than restaurants, more donkeys than cars, and the dirt roads all slope down sooner or later to the postcard sea. Terry is swept up in the town's complex politics when he befriends an earnest, reforming American-educated judge. Soon he convinces the judge to oppose the corrupt but charismatic Senateur Maxim Bayard in an upcoming election. When Terry falls in love with the judge's wife, the electoral drama threatens to become a disaster.Tense, atmospheric, tightly plotted, and surprisingly funny, "Peacekeeping" confirms Berlinski's gifts as a storyteller. Like "Fieldwork," it explores a part of the world that we neither understand nor control--and takes us into the depths of the human soul, where the thirst for power and the need for love can overrun judgment and morality."