Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop's vacation: "Kaminsky's Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written" (The San Diego Union-Tribune).
Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and recuperation after her surgery, reading American crime novels, and gazing at the Black Sea, the Moscow cop is reasonably contentâ??even if his superiors did insist that he take this vacation. But his time off is destined to be short-lived. A former colleague with emphysema has come south to improve his health. Instead Georgi Vasilievich has dropped dead from what appears to be heart failure. The inspector is not so sure.
The local officials want to sweep the incident under the rug. But it turns out Vasilievich was investigating a high-level military conspiracy. Rostnikov takes a look at his files, putting him on the trail of a gang of hardliners who refuse to give up the Soviet dreamâ??and who will go to murderous lengths to ensure that perestroika never comes to pass.
With his Edgar Awardâ??winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, "Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human coreâ??a courtesy he also extends to Moscow, which comes across as a character in its own right: rough and dangerous and somehow tragic" (The New York Time… (más)
Summary: Rostnikov, on vacation in Yalta, learns that the death of a fellow investigator on vacation was murder, and that top investigators throughout Moscow are being sent on vacation at the time of a major political rally.
Porfiry Rostnikov is on vacation in Yalta. Rather, he was sent on vacation. He accepts it because it is a chance for recuperation of his wife, Sarah, from brain surgery. He meets another investigator, Georgi Vasilievich, has pleasant conversations with him in the evenings, until Vasilievich turns up dead from an apparent heart attack, only it turns out to be murder. The signs show that his killers inflicted painful interrogation first, and searched his room.
Meanwhile, his assistant Emil Karpo is investigating the murder of an East German, until he is also ordered on vacation. He stretches his departure to finish his investigation while the others on the team pursue a band of computer thieves preying on Jewish computer specialists, resulting in Sasha Tkach discovering he is all too human, failing his partner Zelach, who winds up in the hospital. He ends up joining Karpo.
What is it Vasilievich had discovered? What connection did this have with all the top investigators around Moscow being sent on vacation? Who was doing this and why, in a Moscow caught in a power struggle between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin? And why does all this coincide with a major political rally?
You probably have a sense of where this is going. That’s what made this diverting rather than riveting. You want to see how Rostnikov and his team figure out what’s going on. There are predictable instances of things being not as they seem. Perhaps one of the reasons Kaminsky sends Rostnikov on vacation is it offers a chance to develop other characters on the team–Tkach, Karpo, and even Zelach.
This was not the most outstanding in the series. Kaminsky develops Rostnikov’s team, explores the labyrinthine maneuverings of the Kremlin with an engaging enough plot to hold your interest. Sometimes, that’s all a book needs to do. ( )
While on a forced vacation in Yalta, Inspector Rostnikov is frustrated by inactivity, until a former acquaintance and high-ranking official dies suddenly. The official cause of death is declared to be a heart attack, but Rostnikov knows better. And in Moscow, while Tkach is playing decoy for gangs that beat their victims almost to death, Emil Karpo ignores orders in order to trail the insane killer of a German tourist. Good, solid storytelling, plot twists, and more of the characters we have come to know so well. ( )
Somewhat confusing because of the long, unfamiliar names, but well written with a twist here and there. Gives a little background of the turbulent time of the breakup of the USSR
Ah... Kaminsky's Inpector Rostnikov series... such a delight, always... Despite some gruesome crime scenes, unavoidable in a crime novel, it's a pleasure to read, I hope the author keeps them comin. I am still anticipating the few in the series that I haven't read...Even notwithstanding Kaminsky's bizarre and amusing tendency to sort of invent some of the Russian names, instead of giving his characters the typical Russian names (well, in the case of the protagonist Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov - it's not an unusual name..., while some others are pretty stunning), it's still a great pleasure to read. ( )
First epigraph: "Who are you?" "A pedlar" "How is it you know I'm being followed?" "A friend told me." "A spy?" "Yes" "And you are a spy too?" "No", said Yevsey. But looking into Zimin's lean, pale face, he remembered the calm and dull sound of his voice, and without any effort corrected himself. "Yes, I am." Maxim Gorky, THE LIFE OF A USELESS MAN, 1907
Second epigraph:The KGB is a very conservative organization. It's been trained to fight international imperialism, Zionism, the Vatican, Radio Liberty, Amnesty International, Titoists, Maoists, and spying organizations. And now they are left without a job. All these bad names have disappeared from the horizon. So they either go left, as I did, and I am not alone. But most of them go to the right. They say the country is being betrayed, the country's falling apart. They say we have to stand and fight to the end. KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin in an address to the Congress of Communist Party Progressives in the Oktober Theatre, Moscow, June 1990
Prologue: The history of the secret police of Russia, from the days of the czars to the present is quite convoluted, which is, perhaps, to be expected.
Chapter One: In the evening of the very same day that Col. Nikolai Zhenya stood at the window of his new office in Lubyanka, three men, two in Moscow and one in Livadia, less than two miles from Yalta, were out walking.
Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop's vacation: "Kaminsky's Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written" (The San Diego Union-Tribune).
Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and recuperation after her surgery, reading American crime novels, and gazing at the Black Sea, the Moscow cop is reasonably contentâ??even if his superiors did insist that he take this vacation. But his time off is destined to be short-lived. A former colleague with emphysema has come south to improve his health. Instead Georgi Vasilievich has dropped dead from what appears to be heart failure. The inspector is not so sure.
The local officials want to sweep the incident under the rug. But it turns out Vasilievich was investigating a high-level military conspiracy. Rostnikov takes a look at his files, putting him on the trail of a gang of hardliners who refuse to give up the Soviet dreamâ??and who will go to murderous lengths to ensure that perestroika never comes to pass.
With his Edgar Awardâ??winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, "Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human coreâ??a courtesy he also extends to Moscow, which comes across as a character in its own right: rough and dangerous and somehow tragic" (The New York Time
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Porfiry Rostnikov is on vacation in Yalta. Rather, he was sent on vacation. He accepts it because it is a chance for recuperation of his wife, Sarah, from brain surgery. He meets another investigator, Georgi Vasilievich, has pleasant conversations with him in the evenings, until Vasilievich turns up dead from an apparent heart attack, only it turns out to be murder. The signs show that his killers inflicted painful interrogation first, and searched his room.
Meanwhile, his assistant Emil Karpo is investigating the murder of an East German, until he is also ordered on vacation. He stretches his departure to finish his investigation while the others on the team pursue a band of computer thieves preying on Jewish computer specialists, resulting in Sasha Tkach discovering he is all too human, failing his partner Zelach, who winds up in the hospital. He ends up joining Karpo.
What is it Vasilievich had discovered? What connection did this have with all the top investigators around Moscow being sent on vacation? Who was doing this and why, in a Moscow caught in a power struggle between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin? And why does all this coincide with a major political rally?
You probably have a sense of where this is going. That’s what made this diverting rather than riveting. You want to see how Rostnikov and his team figure out what’s going on. There are predictable instances of things being not as they seem. Perhaps one of the reasons Kaminsky sends Rostnikov on vacation is it offers a chance to develop other characters on the team–Tkach, Karpo, and even Zelach.
This was not the most outstanding in the series. Kaminsky develops Rostnikov’s team, explores the labyrinthine maneuverings of the Kremlin with an engaging enough plot to hold your interest. Sometimes, that’s all a book needs to do. (