Author: Stuart M. Kaminsky
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Genres/categories:
Mystery, Fiction
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ISBNs:
9780892967476
9781531814267
0892967471
1531814263 |
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Penzler Pick, December 2001: This is a compulsively readable tour de force that keeps more balls in the air than a pitching machine. On top of that, in this 14th novel featuring the one-legged Moscow cop Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Stuart Kaminsky once again catapults us straight from our armchairs into the mindset of modern Russia in all its perverse dysfunctions. Kaminsky must have had fun cooking up the plotlines, which ingeniously plunder the storage bins of mystery history. There's everything from a Jane the Ripper to homages to train-bound thrillers like The Lady Vanishes, North by Northwest, and the more obvious Murder on the Orient Express. At the same time, there's the conscious, skillfully presented element of social realism, an aspect that never intruded into the action of any of those tales. Kaminsky is wonderfully artful at conveying the pervasive cynicism that comes with the territory at all strata of existence in the former Soviet Union, and he does it without ever being repetitious. At an organic level, it seeps into and informs every level of the mystery as it unfolds. One must marvel at the manipulations of the political and legal systems engaged in by Chief Inspector Rostnikov and his dedicated colleagues as they endeavor to deliver the semblance of a not-always-welcome law and order. To top it off, there are some terrific set-piece scenes, such as when the policeman Zelach reveals his unexpected familiarity with heavy-metal arcana as he and his partner interrogate some punks about a missing pal. Kaminsky won the Edgar Allan Poe award in 1989 for the Rostnikov mystery A Cold Red Sunrise. Reading Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express, it's not hard to understand why, only difficult to know how he keeps the series' quality so high. --Otto Penzler
This book is part of the "Porfiry Rostnikov" series. Here are some other books from this series:
 | "Fall of a Cosmonaut"
First published in 2000
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 | "Hard Currency"
First published in 1995
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 | "A Cold Red Sunrise"
First published in 1988
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 | "A Fine Red Rain"
First published in 1987
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 | "Red Chameleon"
First published in 1985
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 | "Death of a Dissident"
First published in 1981
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