Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express (Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mysteries Book 14)

“A compulsively readable tour de force that keeps more balls in the air than a pitching machine.” —Otto Penzlerxa0“A busy and entertaining trio of stories.” — Publishers Weekly “Kaminsky gets Russia right. . . . Superb.” —Ed McBain Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934–2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema—two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life’s work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star , his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life.xa0Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as “the anti-Philip Marlowe.” In 1981’s Death of a Dissident , Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009. From Library Journal Moscow police inspector Rostnikov rides the famed train in search of a valuable historical document. Back in Moscow, meanwhile, the famous son of a powerful citizen has been kidnapped, and a serial murderer stalks the newly rich in the subway. Never a dull moment in Kaminsky's 13th Rostnikov mystery. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. 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 text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Booklist At a time when many mystery writers indulge in writing so spare as to be almost anorexic, Kaminsky is a robust, Dickensian creator of satisfyingly hefty plots and richly complex characters. His latest, the thirteenth in the Inspector Petrovich Porfiry series (following last year's exploration of the dying Mir space station, Fall of a Cosmonaut [BKL Ag 00]), displays Kaminsky at his deft, stage-manager best, juggling three plot lines and an array of quirky, believable characters against the background of the corrupt and chaotic shambles of modern Russia. The action reaches back to Siberia in 1894, when one man in a band of starving, disease-ridden convicts, sentenced to work on constructing the great rail line from Moscow to Vladivostok, buries his treasure--a leather pouch containing a tiny gold box with a letter inside. More than a century later, Inspector Porfiry of the Moscow Police is sent on the 6,000-mile rail line to find this box. Porfiry leaves behind two other investigations: the kidnapping of a skinhead rock star and a series of murders in the Moscow Metro. How Kaminsky weaves these tangled plot lines into a taut suspense fabric, while providing fascinating, sad-funny commentary on his characters and the tensions inherent in the new Russian social order, is a matter of wonder. But Kaminsky never fails to craft superlative mysteries. Connie Fletcher Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Publishers Weekly Edgar-winner Kaminsky's 14th Rostnikov novel (after 2000's Fall of a Cosmonaut), about the imperturbable one-legged Russian policeman, weightlifter, plumber and family man, lacks narrative force due to its episodic structure. But while it may not be one of the author's best, his cast of oddball characters and view of post-Soviet Russia continue to fascinate. Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, now working for Moscow's Office of Special Investigation and reporting to its director, Igor Yaklovev, gets assigned with one of his men to ride the 6,000-mile Trans-Siberian Express to intercept a courier exchanging money for a package somewhere along the route. Yaklovev believes the package contains a 100-year-old secret document belonging to Czar Nicholas II; Rostnikov follows orders, though he knows there's much his boss hasn't told him. Meanwhile, detectives Iosef Rostnikov, the chief inspector's son, and Elena Timofeyeva lead the effort to locate a madwoman whose seemingly random knife attacks have injured or slain three men in four weeks at subway stops. And detectives Emil Karpo and Zelach pursue a kidnapped rock rebel called Naked Cossack, who happens to be the son of a powerful Jewish magnate. The result is a busy and entertaining trio of stories woven together with vignettes about the building of the Trans-Siberian railway. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more