Oops I did it again. It turns out that William Ryan's The Darkening Field (Minotaur Books, 2011, The Bloody Meadow in the UK) is the second, not the third, in his engaging series set in Stalinist Russia. (Those are two words you don't expect to find in the same sentence - Stalinist and engaging - but it's true, this is the kind of book I really look forward to reading at the end of the day.) Regular readers will recall that I liked The Holy Field enough to read The Twelfth Department pretty quickly afterwards, and while I had some quibbles with the latter, I couldn't and still can't argue with Ryan's vivid depiction of the era or his likable hero, Capt. Alexey Dimitrieyvich Korolev.
But reading out of order? The wheels are coming off!
But I digress. In The Darkening Field, Our Hero is assigned to investigate the suicide of a young woman on a film set near Odessa. Why is this Moscow detective assigned to a case so very far away? Because the victim had a cozy relationship with a very highly placed individual in the feared State security apparatus NKVD, and Korolev, having proved himself trustworthy in that case about the icons, is the only man capable of ferreting out the truth and handling it discreetly.* Of course, Korolev also knows that if he gets it wrong, he is likely to end up in a cell at the Lubyanka or worse. Trust, in 1930s USSR, is a close-run thing.
Setting and historical detail are Ryan's strong suit, and you can learn a little bit about why he chose the Soviet film industry as the backdrop for this tale from his Author's Note and more on his website. The film crew - Ukrainfilm, the whole thing modeled loosely on Eisenstadt and his crowd - is working in a small village near Odessa, and is housed at a local agricultural college. But this is no University of Wisconsin-Stout, rather this college has taken over a former great estate that used to belong to an elite family, vanished, of course, in the Revolution. The fading pre-Revolutionary glamour of the grounds adds enormously to the atmosphere, but it also makes you feel a little guilty like when you read about the antebellum South, and think, that sounds like a lovely house, but right, slavery. So go the elite everywhere, although the Russian aristocracy arguably had it a lot worse than Southern slaveholders. In any case, no one is too concerned about their loss.
Ryan chooses instead to concentrate on the ugly side of collectivization in the Ukraine - the famine and destruction and death in the name of wiping out the bourgeoisie, then the peasants' retaliation against the State forces, and their subsequent crackdown and reprisal. It was a terrible cycle that relatively few locals survived, and that left parts of the region scorched and empty and nursing their grievances until an opportunity for revenge presented itself.
"Korolev had heard rumors of what had happened in the Urkraine in 'thirty-two and 'thirty-three - dangerous words heard late at night from sodleirs who'd had too much to drink in the Arbat Cellar. How the Red Army and the NKVD hard forced the peasant to give up ever scrap of food and ho, faced with starvation, they had resisted, futilely, and the shoulders of the Chekists had shot them down. The car passed more than one smoke-blackened church, their domes charred black skeletons, and each village was dotted with roofless ruined buildings. Korolev couldn't help but notice that the few hunched peasant he saw seemed older than their probable years, with barely the energy to lift their feet from the ground." (41)
Now we are all too familiar with the brutal excesses of the Stalinist era, but in 1937 you only knew about it if you'd lived it, and that is the key to this story. And if you know your European history, you also know that there are some folks in Germany around then who were happy to exploit any fissures in the Communist monolith, to serve their own ends. Odessa being a port town, there are plenty of opportunities for illegitimate transfer of information and material (read: espionage and sabotage), so that factors in here as well. It would give away the story to say more, but I'll just note that allegiances - of all kinds - are not always what they appear.
But here is the thing about Revolutionary excess. As we've seen in so many of these detectives-in-repressive-regime stories, such behavior allows Our Hero to maintain his Revolutionary ideals while decrying the horrific acts perpetrated in its name. Communism is awesome except when Stalin does it, and then you'd better be careful that you aren't distantly related to a counterrevolutionary or you may find yourself in Siberia at best, or with a bullet in your back. Ryan adds a twist to the trope, by including a recurring role in his books for the Thieves, the famed precursor to the current Russian Mafia. Their colorful leader, Count Kolya, also trusts Korolev, and lends a hand in an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend kind of way. Of course, the Thieves hate any government, so this isn't so much anti-totalitarianism as it is self-preservation on their part. Korolev gets a sidekick here, too, a plucky Odessa cop named Slivka who just happens to be related to the Thieves. She's tough, wears a leather jacket, and looks the other way when he inadvertently references the Holy Mother. Ryan deploys an array of characters who have private reservations about the regime, but do what they need to do to survive. It makes it easy to like a story, but you might wonder how long this theme can be sustained? When will Korolev's private humanity be denounced? Or will it just wear away, unable to withstand the constant tension of living in a world where simply "asking the question seemed to risk turning the suspicion into fact," and the fact could get you killed. (244) Today's New York Times has a review of Rosemary Sullivan's Stalin's Daughter. Having lived in the belly of one of the most repressive regimes in modern history, it is no wonder that Svetlana Alliluyeva has some issues. Granted, her relationship with Stalin was rather different from Korolev's but it makes you wonder about the emotional toll from walking that tightrope.
*Because as everyone knows, a suicide of a character connected to another prominent character in any story is never a suicide! But as
Showing posts with label William Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Ryan. Show all posts
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Monday, December 30, 2013
The Twelfth Department
William Ryan's series set in Stalin's Russia is thoroughly enjoyable but the second entry, The Twelfth Department (2013, Minotaur) strained credulity in one key aspect. I'll put it to you, Gentle Reader: if you are a parent, would you really put the demands of the state, even this terrible, horrible, no-good state, ahead of the welfare of your young son?
You shouldn't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes, and lord knows good shoes were hard to come by in the USSR of the 1930s unless you knew someone or were someone. So I suppose, who am I to say that the kindly Korolev, Our Hero in the classic good-guy-trying-to-make-a-go-of-it-in-a-dangerous-totalitarian-state mold, isn't making the best decisions he can, given the circumstances? In The Twelfth Department, we find Korolev looking forward to spending some quality time with his son Yuri, sent on a visit from his divorced wife. This time, instead of being cold in Moscow, it's hot, August-in-Central-Europe-hot, which means that the normally bundle-up Muscovites are out and about enjoying the city's parks and open spaces searching for coolness. You can see it coming: Korolev stops in to the precinct to tidy up some paperwork in anticipation of a little holiday and before you can say Bob's-your-uncle, he's caught up in a murder case. Of course, then he's told to butt out because it is a matter for State Security, the dreaded NKVD a.k.a. the Chekists. Except that thanks to some internal nastiness there, Korolev is pulled back in by one department (the 5th) and then learns that another (the 12th) wants a piece of the action too - but at the expense of the 5th! Why all the interest from State Security? Because the murdered men (now two of them) were working on top secret projects that had to do with MIND CONTROL and how it might be used to influence enemies of the state. It is all very sinister and a little bit James Bond, but given what we know now about the Soviet Union under Comrade Stalin, it is just plausible.
What is harder to swallow is that when Korolev's young son disappears, and he himself is brought in for questioning by one of the aforementioned departments, he responds by agreeing to work with the State Security to "solve" the murders. A colleague back at the precinct is set on the task of finding the boy, and other friends help out too. Now, Korolev is given little actual choice in the matter, being caught, as noted above, between rival departments of the NKVD. And, it becomes clear later that his son's security may in fact depend on his working with the Chekists, and in figuring out which of the rivals will actually help him. Still, before that knot becomes apparent, I'd have liked to have read a scene in which Korolev perhaps wrestled with the dilemma a little more.
The tension between the security departments, and the tightrope Korolev must walk to preserve his and his son's lives acts as a sort of rope tow, keeping the story moving forward and eventually becoming the central element. While Ryan's prose rarely gives me the delicious pause that some other writers' do, every once in a while he hits his mark solidly. Consider this:
"It was strange to spend a night with another human being so close by, and periodically Korolev found himself waking, just about, and listening- though for what, he couldn't quite remember at first. A dark silence surrounded him. then, his ears attuning, he might here a car's engine a few streets away, or perhaps some mysterious metallic grinding from down near the river, or a late-night walker's footsteps. Nothing unusual, in other words. It was like that, Moscow - it moved around in its sleep." (11)
(Another night description!) What I love about this paragraph is the way it lays the night so carefully around Our Hero, and it is a place in which he is comfortable. Yet the idea of the city moving around in its sleep is unsettling, suggesting the constant watching and listening, and the vigilance necessary to self-preservation that is the backdrop to any story set in this place and time.
The good-guy-in-a-bad-world theme is common in most of the crime and espionage literature that I read. I like Ryan's work for the stories, but more so for the research-informed setting and plot scaffolding. He offers a little "Historical Note" at the end, discussing his inspiration for this story, and research. In particular, the attention he pays to physical setting - what was where in the city, and when (337-338) - is what makes these books compelling reads. For some visuals that spectacularly reinforce the story, check out Ryan's website. We may live in a world where the idea of the collective good is a joke for many, but lord knows it beats the opposite extreme. For some.
You shouldn't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes, and lord knows good shoes were hard to come by in the USSR of the 1930s unless you knew someone or were someone. So I suppose, who am I to say that the kindly Korolev, Our Hero in the classic good-guy-trying-to-make-a-go-of-it-in-a-dangerous-totalitarian-state mold, isn't making the best decisions he can, given the circumstances? In The Twelfth Department, we find Korolev looking forward to spending some quality time with his son Yuri, sent on a visit from his divorced wife. This time, instead of being cold in Moscow, it's hot, August-in-Central-Europe-hot, which means that the normally bundle-up Muscovites are out and about enjoying the city's parks and open spaces searching for coolness. You can see it coming: Korolev stops in to the precinct to tidy up some paperwork in anticipation of a little holiday and before you can say Bob's-your-uncle, he's caught up in a murder case. Of course, then he's told to butt out because it is a matter for State Security, the dreaded NKVD a.k.a. the Chekists. Except that thanks to some internal nastiness there, Korolev is pulled back in by one department (the 5th) and then learns that another (the 12th) wants a piece of the action too - but at the expense of the 5th! Why all the interest from State Security? Because the murdered men (now two of them) were working on top secret projects that had to do with MIND CONTROL and how it might be used to influence enemies of the state. It is all very sinister and a little bit James Bond, but given what we know now about the Soviet Union under Comrade Stalin, it is just plausible.
What is harder to swallow is that when Korolev's young son disappears, and he himself is brought in for questioning by one of the aforementioned departments, he responds by agreeing to work with the State Security to "solve" the murders. A colleague back at the precinct is set on the task of finding the boy, and other friends help out too. Now, Korolev is given little actual choice in the matter, being caught, as noted above, between rival departments of the NKVD. And, it becomes clear later that his son's security may in fact depend on his working with the Chekists, and in figuring out which of the rivals will actually help him. Still, before that knot becomes apparent, I'd have liked to have read a scene in which Korolev perhaps wrestled with the dilemma a little more.
The tension between the security departments, and the tightrope Korolev must walk to preserve his and his son's lives acts as a sort of rope tow, keeping the story moving forward and eventually becoming the central element. While Ryan's prose rarely gives me the delicious pause that some other writers' do, every once in a while he hits his mark solidly. Consider this:
"It was strange to spend a night with another human being so close by, and periodically Korolev found himself waking, just about, and listening- though for what, he couldn't quite remember at first. A dark silence surrounded him. then, his ears attuning, he might here a car's engine a few streets away, or perhaps some mysterious metallic grinding from down near the river, or a late-night walker's footsteps. Nothing unusual, in other words. It was like that, Moscow - it moved around in its sleep." (11)
(Another night description!) What I love about this paragraph is the way it lays the night so carefully around Our Hero, and it is a place in which he is comfortable. Yet the idea of the city moving around in its sleep is unsettling, suggesting the constant watching and listening, and the vigilance necessary to self-preservation that is the backdrop to any story set in this place and time.
The good-guy-in-a-bad-world theme is common in most of the crime and espionage literature that I read. I like Ryan's work for the stories, but more so for the research-informed setting and plot scaffolding. He offers a little "Historical Note" at the end, discussing his inspiration for this story, and research. In particular, the attention he pays to physical setting - what was where in the city, and when (337-338) - is what makes these books compelling reads. For some visuals that spectacularly reinforce the story, check out Ryan's website. We may live in a world where the idea of the collective good is a joke for many, but lord knows it beats the opposite extreme. For some.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
The Holy Thief
Anything would have been a let-down after JlC's A Delicate Truth. But I'm glad I didn't let my irritation with the workmanlike prose of William Ryan's The Holy Thief get the better of me. This book ended up being a reasonably compelling read, mostly for the detailed portrayal of life in Moscow, ca. 1936.
The story is not complex, although it requires a bit of focus to keep the names and relationships straight, esp. when switching back and forth between first names and patronymics, last names, and a whole lot of ranks - captain, colonel, general, etc. There are some ghastly murders, a couple discussed from the perp's point of view. Our Hero, Alexei Dimitriyevich Korolev, is an earnest comrade who likes being a cop (confusingly called the Militia) because he understands that justice must be served, but who also believes wholeheartedly in the glorious future of the Soviet state, and the sacrifices that must be made to get there. In other words, he's a good Bolshevik. Who gets caught up in a mystery involving the lucrative market for Russian Orthodox icons, and a variety of less-than-savory characters who will do anything to get their hands on the icons, or the money they represent. Not surprisingly, Korolev gets a little too close to the truth, which involves politically sensitive individuals, is pulled off the case, but still manages to solve it all in a dramatic denouement that almost costs him his life but of course does not because I think there are more in this series.
Our Hero is your pretty standard good-guy-in-a-not-so-good-world, but unlike, say, Dr. Siri, he remains quite devoted to the Collective, and has not quite developed the gentle cynicism of that venerable gentleman, nor the barely-toeing-the-line approach of Bernie Gunther. He's not, at the end of they day, that interesting. But what is interesting, fascinating in fact, is the evocation of his world. Moscow in 1936, just nineteen years after the Revolution, is not a garden spot. Life there is hard, uncomfortable, and dangerous - you could be denounced for just muttering the wrong oath in front of the wrong person, and Korolev, who still prays privately every morning, has to watch himself. There are a lot of bare bulbs in bare, cold, sparsely furnished rooms, and (very few) old cars, and threadbare clothing even for devoted servants of the State like Our Hero. The Metropol Hotel, where foreigners stay and bigwigs hang out, stands in stark contrast to the de-consecrated churches, barren police stations, shared apartments, empty shops, endless lines and grime-and-gray, in which much of the action takes place. One particularly well-done element is organized sport: several scenes take place around a soccer stadium and at a match, and at the hippodrome. Ryan has clearly spent a lot of time researching early Soviet-era sports, and the scenes set here provide a marvelous sense of detail and nuance. Yes, it sucks to live in Stalinist Moscow, but if your team is playing, well, that takes priority for just a few hours. The scene at the Moscow Hippodrome, while mostly a meeting between Korolev and another key character, effectively conveys the faded grandeur of that home to the sport of kings, combined with the desperation of small bettors with not much else to lose. Ryan's small but recent list of books at the end suggests a careful research methodology, and it really pays off for the reader
The Holy Thief is a nice addition to the Totalitarians, and the more I think about it, the more I look forward to the next in this series. (I've clearly gotten over my JlC-induced prose hangup.) I haven't read anything set this early in the Soviet era, in fact I've read nothing but Martin Cruz Smith's much much later works. It's worth visiting, from the comfort of the 21st c. anyway.
The story is not complex, although it requires a bit of focus to keep the names and relationships straight, esp. when switching back and forth between first names and patronymics, last names, and a whole lot of ranks - captain, colonel, general, etc. There are some ghastly murders, a couple discussed from the perp's point of view. Our Hero, Alexei Dimitriyevich Korolev, is an earnest comrade who likes being a cop (confusingly called the Militia) because he understands that justice must be served, but who also believes wholeheartedly in the glorious future of the Soviet state, and the sacrifices that must be made to get there. In other words, he's a good Bolshevik. Who gets caught up in a mystery involving the lucrative market for Russian Orthodox icons, and a variety of less-than-savory characters who will do anything to get their hands on the icons, or the money they represent. Not surprisingly, Korolev gets a little too close to the truth, which involves politically sensitive individuals, is pulled off the case, but still manages to solve it all in a dramatic denouement that almost costs him his life but of course does not because I think there are more in this series.
Our Hero is your pretty standard good-guy-in-a-not-so-good-world, but unlike, say, Dr. Siri, he remains quite devoted to the Collective, and has not quite developed the gentle cynicism of that venerable gentleman, nor the barely-toeing-the-line approach of Bernie Gunther. He's not, at the end of they day, that interesting. But what is interesting, fascinating in fact, is the evocation of his world. Moscow in 1936, just nineteen years after the Revolution, is not a garden spot. Life there is hard, uncomfortable, and dangerous - you could be denounced for just muttering the wrong oath in front of the wrong person, and Korolev, who still prays privately every morning, has to watch himself. There are a lot of bare bulbs in bare, cold, sparsely furnished rooms, and (very few) old cars, and threadbare clothing even for devoted servants of the State like Our Hero. The Metropol Hotel, where foreigners stay and bigwigs hang out, stands in stark contrast to the de-consecrated churches, barren police stations, shared apartments, empty shops, endless lines and grime-and-gray, in which much of the action takes place. One particularly well-done element is organized sport: several scenes take place around a soccer stadium and at a match, and at the hippodrome. Ryan has clearly spent a lot of time researching early Soviet-era sports, and the scenes set here provide a marvelous sense of detail and nuance. Yes, it sucks to live in Stalinist Moscow, but if your team is playing, well, that takes priority for just a few hours. The scene at the Moscow Hippodrome, while mostly a meeting between Korolev and another key character, effectively conveys the faded grandeur of that home to the sport of kings, combined with the desperation of small bettors with not much else to lose. Ryan's small but recent list of books at the end suggests a careful research methodology, and it really pays off for the reader
The Holy Thief is a nice addition to the Totalitarians, and the more I think about it, the more I look forward to the next in this series. (I've clearly gotten over my JlC-induced prose hangup.) I haven't read anything set this early in the Soviet era, in fact I've read nothing but Martin Cruz Smith's much much later works. It's worth visiting, from the comfort of the 21st c. anyway.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)