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MURDER ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN EXPRESS
by Stuart M. Kaminsky
Mysterious Press, October 2001
277 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0892967471


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

For a mystery writer of his breadth and depth, Stuart Kaminsky doesn't seem to get much attention. He's very prolific, currently carrying forward four series. The Toby Peters books feature a comic private eye who sublets office space from a butcher of a dentist in the heyday of Hollywood, and his clients are movie celebrities. The Abe Liebermans are Chicago-based police procedurals. His newest series, which I find both refreshing and comfortable, stars Lew Fonseca, a refugee from Chicago barely getting by as a process server in Sarasota.

Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov is the hero of my favorite Kaminsky series, a sort of exotic police procedural that began with Soviet Union stories and has continued into today's troubled times. Rostnikov directs a small Moscow police agency that handles delicate crimes, such as the disappearance of skinhead rock star Naked Cossack, who, unbeknownst to his fans, also happens to be the son of an important media owner and critic of the government. Is he being kidnapped and held for ransom? Has he been murdered by "rappery," hiphop-addicted Muscovites in baggy pants and backwards baseball caps who are the sworn enemies of the neo-Nazi chic "skiny"? Has he been found out by his own crowd and suffered the consequences?

At the same time, Rostnikov's people must stop a woman who is making headlines by stabbing men to death in subway stations--ordinary middle-aged men in business suits who are minding their own business as they wait for their trains.

The primary crime of this book--and the source of its title--is tied into the building of a railroad across the country in the days of the czars, a mammoth endeavor that by its length and climate dwarfs the earlier construction of coast-to-coast tracks in the United States. Both railroad lines were meant to tie together, politically and economically, the far reaches of big countries. Rostnikov's shadowy, string-pulling boss has gotten wind of a purchase of some relic of that epic event that is to take place on the Trans-Siberian Express train. The detectives don't know the identity of the seller or the buyer or at which stop the purchase will take place, but they must prevent the deal and bring back the item.

This book works at various levels. People who enjoy police procedurals can enjoy it from this perspective. Readers who are more interested in characterization can appreciate that even the most minor walk-ons are well-defined and individualized. Rostnikov's relationships with his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law-to-be, and the woman who lives with them, as do her grandchildren, are integral parts of the story, as are the personal lives of the other detectives. In my opinion, however, this book works best as a travelogue, with vivid pictures of frigid forests, shabby, crowded apartments, and ominous nightclubs. Who would have thought that the music and clothes and lifestyles of our most conspicuous youths would be replicated--and even magnified--in Moscow? I feel that this week, while President Bush has been in Moscow, I have been learning more about Russia than he has.

Reviewed by Joy Matkowski, May 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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