comment on style

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Every Man Dies Alone is that the author is constantly changing between the past and present tenses as he writes. There is not a clear cut or obvious reason for this switching and it does not necessarily coincide with natural time changes with the story. For example, in some novels, an author may chose to use the past tense when relating a portion of the story or incidents that have clearly happened in the past and then switch to the present tense to relate portions of the story that are currently happening within the character's timeline.