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DEATH IN SIBERIA
by Alex Dryden
Headline, April 2012
416 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 0755373391


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Anna Resnikov is a former KGB agent who defected to the West in disgust with that agency. When information leaks out of a breakthrough in fusion technology, she enters Siberia in disguise aiming to debrief the nuclear physicist involved, who is being held in isolation at a military facility inside the Arctic Circle. By the time she arrives at Krasnoyarsk, the secret has reached that city concealed on the person of a German intermediary, but unaware, she continues her journey north. In her footsteps treads local militiaman Alexei Petrov, who was the first to discover the body of the German, and is travelling north to visit his dying grandfather. With several Russian internal security agencies in pursuit, Anna's survival looks unlikely and the release of the scientific formula to an energy-hungry world even less probable.

Anna Resnikov has appeared in previous books by Alex Dryden, but there enough of her back story here to provide the reasons behind her defection and her preparedness to brave execution as a spy in undertaking this mission. With any highly-trained operative like Anna it is always difficult to avoid associations with James Bond, but she still comes across as a credible protagonist. The plot has no major flaws although it was disappointing that at one point Anna escapes from the hold of a ship into the cable room via the ventilation system. Leaving aside the problem of why there would be a large ventilation shaft in a cable room, this device is so hackneyed as to be pretty much a joke, and best avoided if suspension of disbelief if required. The book justifies categorisation as a thriller as Anna's position is always precarious, although the dramatic tension is not escalated to any great climax, which comes as a bit of a surprise.

The second major character, Alexei Petrov, is of interest in that on his mother's side he is an Evenk, a Siberian tribe whose traditional life is centred on the seasonal wanderings of the reindeer. This provides an opportunity for discussion of the disappearance of that tradition, and the pollution brought to traditional Evenk herding land, and Siberia generally, by the uncontrolled exploitation of mineral wealth. Mention is also made of Russian preparedness to risk nuclear pollution in the Arctic in its enthusiasm to get to oil and gas reserves, notwithstanding the risks to the environment, and ongoing disputes as to rights to ownership.

From the biographical note it is clear that Alex Dryden is an expert on Russia, and his view is succinctly expressed in the subtitle which appears on the front cover: THE COLD WAR IS DEAD, BUT RUSSIA'S AMBITIONS CONTINUE TO RAGE. In truth, DEATH IN SIBERIA says little about those ambitions beyond what is contained in the discussion of Arctic exploitation. Otherwise, there is the thoroughgoing nastiness of the personnel manning the several Russian internal security agencies. If Dryden can be believed, the average Russian citizen without political connections remains horribly vulnerable to State agencies if he or she is unlucky enough to run foul of one of them, whether guilty of anything or not.

§ Chris Roberts is a retired manager of shopping centres in Hong Kong, and now lives in Bristol, primarily reading.

Reviewed by Chris Roberts, July 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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