Archive 17

Starred review from January 16, 2012
The pseudonymous Eastland’s excellent third thriller set in the Soviet Union under Stalin (after 2011’s Shadow Pass) makes the most of the remote location of much of the book’s action—Siberia. Countless lives hang on the caprice of Joseph Stalin, including that of Inspector Pekkala, a former czarist guard who served time as a political prisoner before becoming Stalin’s (mostly) trusted investigator. In 1939, the dictator sends Pekkala to his old labor camp, Borodok, to look into the murder of Isaac Ryabov, a former cavalry captain and one of the last surviving colleagues of Colonel Kolchak, a close ally of the Russian imperial family. Pekkala must go undercover to catch whoever slit Ryabov’s throat and stay in the good graces of Stalin, who fears that Ryabov’s demise may pose a threat to his rule. Eastland (British author Paul Watkins) captures the brutality of Borodok and the barren desolation of the surrounding area, while maintaining a consistently high level of suspense. Agent: Jason Cooper, Faber & Faber.

December 15, 2011
Set in a Siberian labor camp, this atmospheric (read: brrrr!) thriller finds Nicholas II's one-time special investigator on an undercover assignment from Stalin to solve a cold-case murder--and find the long-dead tsar's hidden supply of gold. Inspector Pekkala is more than a little familiar with Siberia. Banished there after the fall of the Romanovs, he spent nine brutal years in a forest marking trees, a job no man had previously survived for more than six months. Now it's 1939. The world order is crumbling. Russia's treaty with Germany is shaky. America is poised to enter the war. Stalin needs that gold, and now. In Shadow Pass (2011), the previous entry in this series, Pekkala investigated leaks in Stalin's secret tank-building program. Now, the former Finnish soldier must not only uncover the mysteries behind the murder--the victim was falsely identified as the imperial officer in charge of transporting the gold--he must also unravel the secret plot that put his own life at risk. Returning to the gulag, where barrels of formaldehyde await fresh cadavers for medical research, he faces an immediate scary threat from the surviving members of the fight-till-they-die Comitati band. The nomadic Ostyak tribe, which butchers hopeless "escaped" convicts who aren't killed by the cold, lurks on the outskirts of the prison. Fortunately, Pekkala has a few people watching his back. He'll need them in a saga involving trained assassins, harsh betrayals and sudden reversals. It's a bit hard to believe the hero is as sane and centered as he is following his gruesome ordeal. But while not on a par with Martin Cruz Smith's Renko novels, Eastland's third Inspector Pekkala entry is a model of narrative control and intricate plotting.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2012
The Russian Revolution and the czar's imperial gold continue to loom large for Finnish investigator Pekkala in this follow-up to Eye of the Red Tsar (2010). It is 1939, world war is coming, and Stalin orders Pekkala back to the Siberian prison where he spent nine years. His mission: investigate the death of a prisoner; the phlegmatic Finn worries that his chances of surviving the gulag a second time aren't good. On arrival, all the anticipated threats appear, as well as intrigues he couldn't possibly foresee. Archive 17 is both engaging and frustrating. Eastland clearly has studied twentieth-century Russian history, and his efforts show up in many illuminating details. But his story is rooted in a complex, chaotic, and little-known period when soldiers from 24 nations were fighting for control of Siberia. A nine-page historical addendum offers context, but it's hard to escape the sense that history trumps fiction here, at the expense of the wonderfully appalling thrills and suspense offered by, say, Tom Rob Smith (The Secret Speech, 2009), who also mines Russia's tragic, brutal, and remarkable twentieth century.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)