As a serial killer terrorizes Moscow, Rostnikov gets an assignment in Havana
The young girl leads her target into a park, planning on robbing him at knifepoint as soon as they are out of sight. But before she can strike, her quarry changes from a stooped middle-aged man to a feral beast, swinging a lead pipe with sadistic glee. By the time the police find the thief, her murderer is long gone.
He is the first serial killer in Russian history, responsible for at least forty deaths, and his exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. And as his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must depart for Havana, to investigate a Russian politician accused of murdering a young Cuban girl. The Russian people may have abandoned Communism, but for their man in Havana, this case will prove a trip down memory lane.
From Publishers Weekly
From the uncertainties that bear in modern Russia, Kaminsky (Death of a Russian Priest) continues to craft his crisp and thoughtful series featuring Moscow police inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and the enduring cast that comprises his team. Featured here are mainly the lame, bullish Rostnikov, who still torments his rigid superiors and spends his spare time reading American crime paperbacks, and his large, gaunt and emotionally guarded assistant, Emil Karpo. Rostnikov is in Cuba with his Spanish-speaking deputy Elena Timofeyeva where their delicate investigation of the murder charges filed against a Russian national points them toward a vengeful Santeria. In Moscow, Karpo, tracing a serial killer who has taken 40 victims, wonders whether the absence of a discernible pattern in the murders may be a pattern in itself. Karpo, confronting the psyche of a murderer, is brought face to face with the demons lurking beneath his own forbidding surface. Rostnikov, untangling complex political knots, acts on an unwise impulse and has an important encounter of his own. Unlike the Soviet Union, this marvelous series shows no signs of coming apart. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Inspector Rostnikov of Moscow-the hero of eight previous novels, including the Edgar Award-winning A Cold, Red Sunrise (Scribner, 1988)-travels to his country's former ally, Cuba, to solve a sensitive murder case. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
As a serial killer terrorizes Moscow, Rostnikov gets an assignment in Havana
The young girl leads her target into a park, planning on robbing him at knifepoint as soon as they are out of sight. But before she can strike, her quarry changes from a stooped middle-aged man to a feral beast, swinging a lead pipe with sadistic glee. By the time the police find the thief, her murderer is long gone.
He is the first serial killer in Russian history, responsible for at least forty deaths, and his exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. And as his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must depart for Havana, to investigate a Russian politician accused of murdering a young Cuban girl. The Russian people may have abandoned Communism, but for their man in Havana, this case will prove a trip down memory lane.
From Publishers Weekly
From the uncertainties that bear in modern Russia, Kaminsky (Death of a Russian Priest) continues to craft his crisp and thoughtful series featuring Moscow police inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and the enduring cast that comprises his team. Featured here are mainly the lame, bullish Rostnikov, who still torments his rigid superiors and spends his spare time reading American crime paperbacks, and his large, gaunt and emotionally guarded assistant, Emil Karpo. Rostnikov is in Cuba with his Spanish-speaking deputy Elena Timofeyeva where their delicate investigation of the murder charges filed against a Russian national points them toward a vengeful Santeria. In Moscow, Karpo, tracing a serial killer who has taken 40 victims, wonders whether the absence of a discernible pattern in the murders may be a pattern in itself. Karpo, confronting the psyche of a murderer, is brought face to face with the demons lurking beneath his own forbidding surface. Rostnikov, untangling complex political knots, acts on an unwise impulse and has an important encounter of his own. Unlike the Soviet Union, this marvelous series shows no signs of coming apart.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Inspector Rostnikov of Moscow-the hero of eight previous novels, including the Edgar Award-winning A Cold, Red Sunrise (Scribner, 1988)-travels to his country's former ally, Cuba, to solve a sensitive murder case.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.