Monstrum

The setup here had a lot of promise. A post-civil war Russia is imagined in the year 2015. A Russian Nationalist side has won out over a Russian Anarchist/Communist side. A provincial detective from Murmansk is elevated to a Moscow district murder squad due to his friendship with an ambitious officer of the secret police (still nicknamed the Chekists here, as they have been since the Russian Stalinist era) and not so coincidentally due to his physical resemblance to the current Nationalist Vice-President named Leonid Koba and as it turns out also due to his former wife having been a general in the losing Anarchist Army. The various political gamesmanship plays out while the detective pursues an investigation to find a serial killer show more known as the Monstrum.

By the end though, too many coincidences have been piled on top of too many absurd situations which are only briefly clarified and that just made this reader angrier the longer the book went on.

The cover blurb from The Times compared this to Fatherland, Gorky Park and The Silence of the Lambs, but I'd have to say it fell far short of the mark set by those top thrillers. It came closest to Fatherland with having at least a plausible alternative history backdrop painted in. The Russian atmosphere and character building seemed to only consist of everybody drinking large quantities of vodka, Gorky Park seemed like much more of a ground-breaker in giving us an entry to some Russian spirit and soul. There was none of the macabre thrill of villains such as Hannibal Lector and Jamie Gumb from Silence of the Lambs. show less

This was a case of never judge a book by its cover and do not always accept another person's judgement as your own.

This poor book has been sitting on my shelves quite some time now, untill I finally decided to read it. Hubby disliked it, couldn't get through and it wasn't given the most interesting cover one could think of. Now I've read it, I say it's a shame I didn't pick it up earlier.

It is a great book for those amongst you that like to read about the way things go in Russia. Some knowlegde of Rusdian and Soviet history is also convenient, because this book mixes old with new, revolution with civil war, a dead son, an ex-wife, childhood friend, foreign experts bosses and employees in a way that makes this book a typical example of show more the way things go, have gone and probably will go for many years.
For its the Russian way.
The book is very interesting, especially the ending. Readers who know the Russian way will not be surprised :-)

I will look into the background of this writer, interesting to know if he had a Rusdian background, knowlegde of the language. He nails the plot in the book as if he were Russian... show less

A dark suspense novel set in a future Russia. The details of the inner workings and intrigue of the politics works well against one detective's struggle to do the right thing.

este libro es excelente puesto que trata de un tema de mucho suspenso que ocurre en un lugar de estrato muy bajo en Moscú.