Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

Description

In the waning days of the Russian Empire, the Czar inked a secret treaty with Japan that was stolen en route by one of the workmen on the Trans-Siberian Railway. More than a one hundred years later, the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Czardom, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is trying to find his way in the Russia of Vladimir Putin. A large amount of money is being sent from Odessa to Vladivostok to purchase a mysterious Czarist document, and Rostnikov’s superior believes it may be this long-lost treaty. Eastbound ticket in hand, Rostnikov sets out to investigate. Meanwhile, his subordinates in Moscow tackle a female Jack the Ripper and an anti-Semitic punk rocker whose mob connections may have gotten him kidnapped. It’s a brave new world in western Russia, but where Rostnikov is going, the landscape hasn’t changed in centuries.

Description

"In the old Russia, the law was written by Stalin." "Now it's written by Kafka.". "Only in the capital city of this new, chaotic world can a skinhead Jew rule the musical subculture. He's the just-kidnapped heavy-metal star son of one of Moscow's most powerful citizens. The search for him through the exotic network of local illicit postpunk clubs is conducted by two glaring fish out of water: Detectives Karpo, champion of old-school Soviet justice, and Zelach, an unlikely paragon of instinct over intellect.". "In another kind of underground, a murderous young women stays one ghostly step ahead of the authorities. Her killing ground is the Moscow Metro. Her weapon is a dangerously honed kitchen knife. And her serial victims, all male, all well-dressed, all members of the city's new elite, are seemingly selected at random.". "Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov rides into the frigid east on the legendary Trans-Siberian Express. Six thousand miles long and built at a cost of more than a trillion czarist rubles and thousands of lives, the line from Moscow to Vladivostok carries the one-legged inspector in his pursuit of a treasured historical document, as well as a greater find with even more explosive consequences. For behind the quest and many miles away back in Moscow looms the figure of Rostnikov's superior, Director of the Office of Special Investigation Igor Yaklovev, whose long-nurtured designs for power await their moment of fruition ... while the entire Russian government faces a hard and unsuspected fall."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction

Other Editions

• Murder on the Trans-Siberian ExpressMysterious Press2001-01-01
• Murder on the Trans-Siberian ExpressThorndike Press2002-01-01