Blood and Rubles
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
In an era of financial free-for-all in Russia, a Moscow cop deals with rampant crime in a “terrific” and “exceptional” police drama (Detroit Free Press).
It’s the mid-nineties, and capitalism and privatization have come to Russia. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become oligarchs, and the brutal Russian mafia is on the rise. Newfound democracy has not reduced the crime rate, and Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a forty-year veteran of the Moscow police department, and his colleagues have their hands full.
A prominent businessman is kidnapped in broad daylight. Three children—as innocent looking as they are savage—terrorize a slum. And a house full of Czarist treasures is raided by tax police—only to have every piece vanish the following day.
As criminals at all levels rush to exploit a system in confusion, “Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is a rarity among policemen: shrewd, utterly incorruptible and destined to survive each complex political shift” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kaminsky excels each time he enters the harshness of post-Cold War Russia, a politically and socially volatile world where his Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is a rarity among policeman: shrewd, utterly incorruptible and destined to survive each complex political shift. As in previous Rostnikov works, including the Edgar-winning A Cold Red Sunrise, the inspector's team has several cases to crack--and, as always, Russian society itself is as much an adversary as the assembled criminals. A gang of tattooed Mafia killers stage a shoot-out that claims the life of a prostitute, the only human to break through the robotic exterior of Emil Karpo, Rostnikov's loyal assistant; three young boys are robbing and killing on the streets; a cache of valuable artifacts vanishes; and the ruthless cunning of a wealthy couple is put to the test in the aftermath of a kidnapping attempt. Fortified by his love for weight lifting, Ed McBain novels, Russian plumbing and American pizza, the rotund Rostnikov perseveres, strong as a bull, lame in one leg and quite clearly nobody's fool.
