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During that period, deputies coerced false confessions, sometimes using cattle prods or “the water cure”: pouring water into suspects’ nostrils until they complied.

Mackintosh’s Women’s Prize-nominated third novel carries the power of her first two, “The Water Cure” and “Blue Ticket.”

Southern California is still searching for a water cure.

Today, with a president of the United States who has recommended that “we should go much stronger than waterboarding,” it is important to remember that at least three of the captured American airmen from the Doolittle raid were waterboarded by the Kempeitai, a torture then notorious as the “water cure,” among other forms of abuse.

Like “The Water Cure,” “Blue Ticket” is not a book that offers easy answers.