The Lost Soldiers

In the third Kyiv Mystery by one of Ukraine’s most celebrated authors, a young investigator navigating the unsettled society after a civil war is faced with an impossible puzzle: How did fifty Red Army soldiers visiting a bathhouse disappear, leaving their boots, weapons, and uniforms behind?

There was no way for them all to march out, naked, without being seen. Yet they have vanished without a trace. While the case seems impossible, Samson Kolechko is a dogged detective, and he has an unusual tool at hand. He can secretly eavesdrop using one of his ears, severed by a Cossack, that can still hear. Having placed his bit of personal equipment in the lining of the jacket of a bathhouse employee, and putting together every clue he can show more find, he eventually is able to crack the difficult case.

These are unusual mysteries, not bound by genre expectations. The pacing is peripatetic, there’s a touch of magical realism, and the setting contributes to the sense that nothing makes sense and anything could happen. Yet there’s also a fair amount of humor and gentle poking at the ironies of living in the midst of war and chaos, as well as some seriousness. Samson’s beloved wife works for a statistical bureau where, to her dismay, counting things (an activity she relishes) is giving way to confiscating things, triggering violence between Bolshevik authorities and the people. She’s a true believer in the revolution who is suddenly confronted with uncertainty about where all this is going. There are also subtle echoes of the current war, with a striking scene in the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, recently the site of a struggle between the Moscow-based Orthodox church and the Ukrainian Orthodox church.

We’re lucky to have this series, ably translated by Boris Dralyuk, that gives us a chance to visit historical wartime Kyiv through the imagination of an inventive and talented writer. show less

A new Andrey Kurkov is always an event to be celebrated. He carries a mix of humor and cynicism that I find deeply engaging. Set in post-WWI/pre-WWII Ukraine, there's plenty to laugh at and plenty to bemoan. The Czar is dead, Ukraine is now under Russian control, and Ukrainians are walking a very narrow tightrope. It takes very little to wind up against a wall about to be shot. But until that happens, life takes all kinds of outrageous, ridiculous ploys just to keep going.

In a way The Lost Soldiers is a novel of resistance, but it's not at all heavy-handed in the way that description might suggest. Our central character, Samson Kolechko, is intellectually nimble—a crucial skill at the time. He never intended to become part of the show more Ukrainian police force, but here he is, trying to facilitate a kind of justice that will let him sleep at night.

The secondary characters are downright charming, for the most part. His wife Nadezhda works with a bureau determined to tally every X or Y or Z (boat, house, business) in Ukraine to determine which are in appropriately proletariat hands and which are not. Kolechko's partner at work is a former priest who has (mostly) lost his faith and, like Kolechko, has also fallen into policing without meaning to. Kolechko's superior is a former member of the Czar's troops, which means he faces a good bit of bureaucratic suspicison.

If you aren't familiar with this mystery series, get going with it! I would suggest starting with the first volume, [book:The Silver Bone|173956327], in which we learn about a somewhat unusual "superpower" (for want of a better word) that helps Kolchko in his policing.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. show less