Surviving in post Tsarist Russia 1930’s
translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
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A glimpse into the conditions, the harshness of Soviet Russia post the revolution as Leningrad Detective Vasily Zaitsev of the Criminal Investigation Department investigates the death of a trotting horse and its Red Army Cavalry rider. A death brought about by something unusual, strange even.
Filled with darting, often satirical commentary on the times, the novel is dark, brooding and at times savage, with moments of compassion. A time when the Red Terror is unleashed, the political purge by the Bolsheviks.
Zaitsev’s search takes him to Novocherkassk in Southern Russia where the Cavalry training school has suddenly been relocated. Is this a subterfuge, an effort to save the horses or something else?
An unasked for assistant, Comrade Zoya, is sent with him. She’s prickly and annoying. There’s more here than meets the eye. Is she checking up on him?
A train stop and confrontation with starving people, like wraiths appear out of the darkness, is a wake-up call. A man made famine, known as the Holodomor has gripped Russia.
Novocherkassk is supposedly in the growing part of Russia. What Detective Zaitsev finds is starvation and danger. People being forced to give up their prized possessions to those in charge. Whoever that might be!
Always in the back of Zaitsev’s mind is that he might be taken back for questioning by the Soviet Secret police.
Meanwhile back at his apartment his landlady seems to keep adding staff for him, although he pays little attention. She’s hired a cook for him, and a nanny? What?
Once more I felt like I was wading through despair and hopelessness and yet I’m sympathetic to Zaitsev and his plight. I feared his many dilemmas and enjoyed any breakthroughs.
Zaitsev is living dangerously in a time where the state turned child against parent and all was in flux.
A fine Russian noir historical detective novel!
A Pushkin Vertigo ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.
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