Red Square, The Ultimate Soviet thriller, by EDWARD TOPOL & FREDERIKH NEZANSSKY

The Ultimate Soviet thriller

EDWARD TOPOL &

FRIDRIKH NEZANSKY

Corgi Books

1984

"Fast moving and exciting... better than Gorky Park."

GOOD BOOK GUIDE

Translated from the Russian

by Krasnaya Ploshchad

413 pages

Goodread review :

Kenneth rated it ***** it was amazing

The setting is the Soviet Union

in the early 1980s when

Leonid Brezhnev was the top guy. The book is a combination of a police procedural with a panoramic view of how much of Soviet society and government worked (or didn't) back then - so much corruption.

Igor Shamrayev is the main investigator of the death of Brezhnev's brother-in-law, Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, which was announced to the public as a suicide but which insiders know wasn't. The politics are fascinating - everybody has a reason to be paranoid.

The KGB (secret police) and certain other government agencies, have ways to snoop on anybody of interest - planting hidden microphones and cameras almost anywhere. One of the co-authors - Neznansky - worked for quite a few years in one of them. The plot is fast moving with a number of twists. People get killed. But you leave with a definite impression of how a long time Communist society actually worked out, and why the USSR finally collapsed a decade later. Much of this story is factually accurate - the names, the people and the places... the death of Brezhnev's brother-in-law was widely reported in the West. 'Death after long illness' said Pravda... although Andripov told Brezhnev it was suicide. Just supose it was murder...

"Meaty entertainment."

SUNDAY TIMES

"Gripping and informative fiction that has an unexpected and chilling end."

YORKSHIRE POST

"Much more fun than Gorky Park." THE SPECTATOR