About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

SIREN OF THE WATERS
by Michael Genelin
Soho , July 2008
336 pages
$24.00
ISBN: 1569474842


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

You think that perhaps your life is a bit rough. Perhaps it is. But I wouldn't want to match stories with Commander Jana Matinova of the Slovak police force. Attaining any kind of promotion is difficult for any woman on any police force, especially one in a former Soviet bloc country where the aura of that regime persists long after the reality is gone. Jana has managed to work past the stigma of marrying an actor, even when her husband Dano became a dissident. She is exiled, in a manner of speaking, and eventually works her way back into the relative good graces of the force. In the process, she loses her daughter, her husband, her mother.

Colonel Trokan is Jana's mentor and has helped her throughout her career. It is Trokan who assigns her to an accident case. Seven people are dead; six of them presumably prostitutes. There is reason to believe that this accident is connected to other crimes, not all of them taking place in Slovakia. Jana begins to investigate, with the help (if one can call it that) of her aide Seges. Then Jana's presence is requested in France, at a summit having to do with the traffic in human beings. There is evidence to indicate that her country is a conduit for this kind of trade.

Moira Simmons is leading the conference; her former husband is killed at the conference. Dmitri Levitin of Russia teams up with Jana when she investigates that crime, which she must do very discreetly given her lack of status with the French police.

Jana and Dmitri start pulling at the various threads that connect the murders; they all seem to run back to a killer or perhaps master criminal named Koba. Nobody knows what Koba looks like, but everyone agrees that he is very powerful, and very dangerous.

Michael Genelin takes all the threads, tangles them, untangles them, tangles them again, then ultimately takes the mess and makes a wonderful story. His characters are very believable, the plot is convoluted enough for just about the pickiest reader, and the suspense is handled very well. Even when the writing slows down, it seems appropriate, as if a fictional translator were searching for the right word. The ending is not neat and tidy, but that works, too. One really can't expect tidiness from the world in which Jana operates.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, May 2008

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]