I've tried sending this two other times. Hopefully, the third
time'll be the charm.
The first Soviet mystery novel to be published in English
(that I'm aware of, anyway) was Julian Semyenov's PETROVKA
38, which, as if to prove my earlier-stated thesis that the
police procedural is the most universal of mystery
sub-genres, was a police procedural.
There've also been several American crime writers who've
written cop stories with Russian settings, including Martin
Cruz Smith and Stuart Kaminsky. In fact, Smith's GORKY PARK
and Kaminsky's DEATH OF A DISSIDENT appeared with a few
months of each other, and both have since been followed by a
series of popular, award-winning sequels.
To the appeal of an unusual (for Western readers) setting,
Soviet emigre Fridrikh Neznansky adds actual Soviet police
experience. After graduating from law school (where one of
his fellow students was Mikhail Gorbachev), Neznansky spent
many years as a criminal investigator for in the Moscow
Prosecutor's (or Procurator's, depending on who's doing the
translating) Office, roughly the equivalent of a DA's
investigator in the US.
After leaving the USSR, Neznansky collaborated on two cop
novels with former Soviet journalist Eduard Topol, DEADLY
GAMES and its sequel, RED SQUARE (not to be confused with
Smith's identically titled Moscow-set cop novel). He's also
written at least one, solo, stand-alone police novel, THE
BODY IN SOKOLNIKI PARK, published as a PBO in the US (a UK
edition was apparently entitled THE FAIR AT SOKOLNIKI PARK,
but it's not absolutely clear whether or not this a different
novel).
Neznansky's books, in addition to the appeal of seeing Soviet
police work from the viewpoint of a novelist with actual
experience, have a bleakness reminiscent of the works of the
Sjowall/Wahloo combo, along with insights into the nasty
political back-stabbing that routinely went on in the USSR. I
personally preferred Neznansky's collaborations with Topol to
his solo effort, though this may have a reflection of the
quality of the translations, or of the fact that I read
SOKOLNIKI PARK first, and, consequently, was used to the
style.
JIM DOHERTY
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