History Literature / TheYiddishPolicemensUnion

* AntiHero: Landsman, big time. Being a classical anti-hero, not a [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] one: a normal person, fundamentally good, but hardly heroic and with numerous flaws.

* DropTheHammer: Berko's warhammer, a homemade replica of a tribal Tlingit weapon.
--> ''"He carries in his right hand the uncanniest hammer any Jew or gentile is ever likely to see. It's a replica of the one that Chief Katlian is reported to have swung during the Russian-Tlingit war of 1804, which the Russians lost... The head is a thirty-five-pound block of [[ThunderboltIron meteorite iron]]..."''

* HeroesWantRedHeads: Bina Gelbfish is a redhead, and Landsman was attracted to her for this, even following their divorce.

* AmbiguouslyGay: The tomboyish Naomi Landsman is often mistaken for a butch lesbian, but claims that she's lesbian "in every way but sexual preference."

%%* BuryYourGays:
%%** [[spoiler:Mendel Shpilman]]
%%** [[AmbiguouslyGay Possibly also]] [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman.]]

%%* TheChessmaster: Itzik Zimbalist and Hertz Shemets (literally and figuratively).
%%* ChessMotifs

%%* CowboyCop: Landsman.

%%* GentleGiant: Berko.

%%* HeroesWantRedHeads: Bina Gelbfish.

%%* KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman]].
%%* KnightInSourArmor: Landsman.

%%* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman's plane crash]]

* NobleBigotWithABadge: Willie Dick, though he claims to hate everyone equally.

%%* OminousFog: Alaska in November.

* WorldHalfEmpty: So it feels to the Jews in the story.

* TotallyNotACriminalFront: The Verbover crime syndicate is also a Jewish religious sect with its own buildings and places of worship.

* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub: The Verbover crime syndicate is also a Jewish religious sect with its own buildings and places of worship.

* ChekhovsGun:

* TabletopGame/{{Chess}} in general, to the extent that Caissa the goddess of chess is name-checked.
%%* TheChessmaster: Itzik Zimbalist and Hertz Shemetz (literally and figuratively).

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: [[spoiler: Mendal Shpilman]] may indeed be the coming of the Messiah, born with wondrous abilities to lead the Jewish people back to their promised land and bring in the new era. Or he may simply be a very charismatic and insightful individual about whom has arisen a lot of coincidences and exaggerated stories by very desperate and very religious people eager to believe in any sign of salvation.

* AcceptableReligiousTargets: Hassidic Judaism and Evangelical Christianity are both portrayed in a markedly negative light.

** Journalist Dennis Brennan's spoken dialogue verges on overly florid PurpleProse in places, because he's an American journalist who's learned to speak Yiddish without learning to speak it very well.

* MeaningfulName: So many. Landsman himself, as the central character in a novel obsessed with the question of the Jews having a land of their own. Melekh Gaystik, the former chess champion, has a name meaning 'intellectual king'. The American agent Mr. Cashdollar. And many, many more (most of them disguised by being in Yiddish).

* HalfBreedDiscrimination: Berko has a Tlingit-Indian mother and Jewish father, and the fact that he identifies more with his Jewish heritage does not help things given the longstanding antipathy between Jews and the native inhabitants.

* YiddishAsASecondLanguage: Although the characters are all supposed to be speaking Yiddish, there are a number of Yiddish and Hebrew words that are used as slang that appear untranslated, such as "sholem" for "gun." Ironically, the text sometimes states that Sitka residents use "[[ForeignSwearWord American" (i.e. English language) curse words]].

* BeardOfEvil: [[spoiler: Aryeh Baronshteyn's long Orthodox beard with a fake SkunkStripe to give the impression he's OlderAndWiser than he is]]

%%* ThoseTwoBadGuys: Flingler and Dr. Roboy