Archangel

Rating:
Summary: TOO SPELLBINDING TO PUT DOWN
Review: A setting that chills the bone; a premise that chills the heart. These are the pillars of Archangel, a tension driven third novel by former BBC correspondent and London Times columnist Robert Harris.

As in Fatherland (1992), with its disturbing thesis that Nazi Germany had been victorious in World War II and Hitler still lived, Mr. Harris skillfully blends fact and fiction to craft an equally frightening tale of contemporary Russia.

"There can be no doubt that it is Stalin rather than Hitler who is the most alarming figure of the twentieth century.....Stalin, unlike Hitler has not been exorcised....Stalin stands in a historical tradition of rule by terror, which existed before him, which he refined, and which could exist again. His, not Hitler's, is the specter that should worry us."

These words are spoken by "Fluke" Kelso, an antithetic hero, to be sure. Thrice divorced, an unsuccessful writer, he is a historian, a Sovietologist who greets alcohol with enthusiasm and his colleagues with ennui.

In unforgivingly frigid Moscow, where "air tasted of Asia - of dust and soot and Eastern spices, cheap gasoline, black tobacco, sweat," Kelso is a part of a symposium invited to view recently opened archival materials.

He is visited in his hotel room by Papu Rapava, an older man, a drunk, "a survivor of the Arctic Circle camps," who claims to have been an eye-witness to Stalin's death. Rapava says he was once bodyguard and chauffeur for Laventy Beria, the chief of the secret police. Rapava claims to have accompanied Beria to Stalin's room the night the GenSec suffered a stroke, and to have assisted Beria in stealing Stalin's private papers, a black oilskin notebook, which was later buried.

As Kelso decides to spend his final day in Moscow either refuting or corroborating Rapava's story, the writer comes face to face with Mamantov, a Stalinist who feels "the force of Comrade Stalin, even from the grave," and lives amidst the ex-dictator's memorabilia - miniatures, boxes, stamps, medals.

Surveying the collection, Kelso shudders, remembering that today one in six Russians believe Stalin to be their greatest leader. "Stalin was seven times more popular than Boris Yeltsin, while poor old Gorbachev hadn't even scored enough votes to register."

As Kelso becomes convinced that Stalin's secret papers do exist and obsessed with finding them, he is dogged by R. J. O'Brian, an overly zealous reporter whose beat is the world.

But, once the notebook is found instead of holding answers, it poses more questions. The last piece of the puzzle may lie in Archangel, a desolate White Sea port where "Everything had decayed. The facades of the buildings were pitted and peeling. Parts of the road had subsided."

Together Kelso and O'Brian drive 800 miles across an eerily deserted frozen landscape to reach Archangel before a storm rolling in from Siberia buries them or pursuing government agents capture them.

What the two find, Stalin's long hidden secret, is more appalling than either of them could have imagined.

With ever escalating suspense Mr. Harris catapults his mesmerizing narrative to a shocking denouement

Film rights for this unsettling tale have been sold to Mel Gibson, and it will surely capture a slot on bestseller lists.. Archangel is too close to possible for comfort, and too spellbinding to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Another gem for Harris
Review: Robert Harris doesn't just give you mysteries, he tweaks the genre by adding his own "what if" historical twists. This latest is a gem. It begins somewhat slowly then the pace picks up until it reaches high speed in the frozen wastes of northern Russia.

His protagonist is far from the usual adventurer; he's Fluke Kelso, a cynical, down on his luck academic attending a symposium in present day Moscow. The notorious Joe Stalin is, in a sense, the villain. Soon after he arrives in Russia Kelso is presented with evidence of secret papers of Stalin. From there he investigates a decades-old mystery. Along the way he meets unusual characters including a scholarly prostitute, an over-eager reporter and some scary old-guard Russians.

The plot is more than a simple mystery. Harris challenges you to imagine what will happen to the new Russia and what some of the forces were that shaped the old Soviet Union.

His characters, realistic descriptions of the Russian landscape in winter and the imaginative plot will keep you reading until the last sentence.

Rating:
Summary: Anticlimactic Ending
Review: This work is rich in historical and "documentary" detail more than its plot and characters. It stimulates further inquiry into the 20th century history of Russia, but comes short on the literary and artistic side. the plot seems to falter and collapse two thirds the way reading the novel and become a fantastic and highly implausible dream. The ending was done in a haste in which the characters destroy each other in a suicidal rage which is supposed to correct all the mistakes. Somehow the pace of events accellerates in the last third of the novel and ends the story in a short summary of what it could have been if it were written more patiently. It could have been much more memorable if the hand of the author have not forced the characters into hasting exits from the plot near the end. Stalin's biography by Edvard Radzinsky has more artistic and literary beauty in it and makes a better reading into the Stalin's era.

Rating:
Summary: Fiction that helps understand current events.
Review: A chilling story set in Russia, where support for the Communist Party remains widespread. Mixes an intimate knowledge of history with an eye for detail and a great story.

Rating:
Summary: Harris is now three for three
Review: Were it not for the uniformly glowing reviews that each of his books has gotten in every major media outlet, you might well be able to convince me that I've overrated the thrillers of Robert Harris because of the conservative themes of his books. He's at it again in Archangel, the premise of which is that Stalin may have left behind a secret notebook when he died in March, 1953.

Once promising British historian of Soviet affairs, "Fluke" Kelso, is in post-Gorbachev Moscow for a symposium on the status of the old archives of the Soviet Union. After his speech he's approached by an elderly Russian man who, over many drinks, tells him an amazing story. The man, Papu Rapava, was a very young bodyguard for Lavrenty Beria, the brutal head of the NKVD, Stalin's state security agency. He was on duty the night that Stalin had his fatal stroke and drove Beria to the scene, then witnessed Beria hiding a notebook which he retrieved from Stalin's safe in the Kremlin. Stalin was notorious for not putting anything on paper, so when rivals toppled Beria from power, both he and Rapava were tortured, but neither revealed the whereabouts of their find.

Kelso sees the notebook as a final chance to redeem his disappointing career, but his fellow historians at the symposium think he's desperately grabbing at straws. Soon though he's got the Russian secret service and the shadowy remnants of the Communist Party on his tail and Rapava is murdered before they can recover the notebook. With the help of an American TV newsman and Rapava's daughter Kelso sets out on a dangerous journey that will take them to the frigid woods of Archangel and to a confrontation with Stalin's most dangerous legacy.

Like his other books, Harris uses the materials of actual history as a springboard for an exciting adventure with insidious political overtones. At one point the characters are discussing Russia's future and suggest that it will be bleak until the nation honestly reckons with the monstrous crimes of Stalin and Lenin. As they point out, in present day Russia, which never had a Nuremberg Trials or a South African-style Truth Commission, the Communist Party still receives a huge percentage of the vote in national elections and a startling 24% of the populace considers Stalin to be the greatest leader in the country's history. Harris lays out the case against these butchers and, once again, the discomforting subtext is that this is the regime that we cooperated with in WWII and then coexisted with for the next half century.

During the Cold War, novelists like John Le Carre created a really unfortunate literature of moral equivalency, which suggested that there was little or no difference between the West and the Communist East. That they and other intellectuals of the Left were successful is evidenced by the morally bankrupt policy of détente, which essentially represented our capitulation and an acceptance of the legitimacy of the Communists abhorrent system of totalitarian rule. Today there's at least one author whose books demand that we reconsider that whole period and our delusions about the Soviet Union, particularly in comparison to Nazi Germany. If you're looking for thrillers that, while action packed, will also make you think, you owe it to yourself to read the books of Robert Harris.

GRADE : A-

Rating:
Summary: Nice Beach/Plane Fare
Review: Good airplane or beach reading, this thriller hangs on the premise that Stalin had a personal diary that no one ever read, and which has remained hidden since his death. A U.S. historian/journalist in semi-disrepute is invited to a conference about Stalin in Moscow where he is approached by an old man with just such a wild tale. Everything proceeds to careen through 4 wild days from the "new Russia" of pricey Moscow bars and hookers to the bleak forests of Archangel in the far north. It's a good ride, imparting lots of useful factoids about Stalin and his current appeal while delivering a solid Robert Ludlumish conspiracy thriller.

Rating:
Summary: The other Fatherland
Review: Der Fuhrer is too horrible to be seen face-to-face in Harriss' debut novel "Fatherland", and was only referred to by radio announcers. In "Archangel", Harriss stokes the same idea from a different perspective - obsession with the 20th century's other monster, the evil Joseph Stalin. As in "Fatherland" and "Enigma" (the latter of the two is a great read when you consider it as a possible prequel to the former), the unlikely hero is something of a detective - in this case an historian. But Harriss refuses to succumb to the "snobbery of chronology" by which history is simply dismissed as anything more important than an explanation for how we are today. In Harriss world, the past has a habit of finding its way back to the present - whether it's the proof of genocide (Fatherland) or Soviet-backed massacres (Enigma), nothing is ever consigned to history without a chance to rear its head and spoil our ordered world. In "Archangel", the past is Stalin and his reign of terror. Post-Soviet Russia yearns for direction and a clique of ex-Soviet generals and politicians remain permanantly on the verge of returning the nation to soviet rule. Even the structures arranged by the Yeltsin government to create democracy have the seeds of autocracy, and those who seek to prevent the rebirth of the KGB may actually be following in its footsteps. But it's business as usual for the westerners who exploit Russia's resources and its potential for a market. The hero-historian, lead on to believe that the official story of "Uncle Joe" may be incomplete, looks deeper into records and finds that the dead dictator's legacy may yet be unrealized. Helped - sometimes pushed - by an American TV journalist and by the daughter of a Stalinist security guard, the hero rtacks down the ephemeral clues - stories and other conspiracy theories - for the hard evidence: a journal pried out of Stalin's desk by Beria. But even that prize isn't enough, and the heroes head out to Archangel, the irradiated northern frontier of Russia, where they confront, not only the truth, but their powerlessness against it and (gasp) their own complicity in its realization. "Archangel" arguably surpasses previous novels - though Harriss has yet to draw a world as fully realized as post-war Berlin of "Fatherland" - in that the story is built on the experiences of flawed and credible charachters. In any novel built on old stories told to the main charachters, there is always the plot-weakness that the stories may be completely fake. Harriss deftly turns this into a strength by highlighting a sort of intellectual obsession by which the human charachters can't help but believe the stories. This isn't as simple as the obsession of Harriss previous charachters (in Fatherland, the hero is shocked to learn that his warm socks were knit from the hair of concentration camp victims; the cryptoanalyst in "Enigma" was motivated by love and the need to save England from the U-Boats), and the obsession drives the book. When one of those stories recounts Lavrenti Beria's last day at work, expecting to take over Stalin's job, the obsession becomes palpable. The former KGB boss, as Harriss descibes him, has no idea what's waiting for him within the Kremlin. History tells us he should have called in sick that morning. But who'll warn us not repeat Beria's mistakes?

Rating:
Summary: much better
Review: Compared to Fatherland and Enigma Archangel is much better. More action and faster paced. All I'm going to say is that it's about the Stalins. It is worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: A missed opportunity
Review: Robert Harris in his novel Archangel presents me with something of a dilemma. I enjoyed thoroughly some aspects of the book and others I found to be almost unreadable. I do not have an issue with plots that are far-fetched or fantastic in nature, but to convince me they do need an element of conviction. At times, particularly in the latter half of Archangel, I felt the author wanted nothing more than to get the book over with.

Joseph Stalin is the central figure in the plot, his thoughts, beliefs and actions shape the events of the novel. Indeed, Harris writes well of the power of a belief system that led to the terrors of Stalinist Russia. He conveys the almost depressing fear of that period in history and transposes it to a modern day Soviet Union. Thus Harris is able to set the scene of the book in an effective way and the tension builds in a convincing manner. However, in doing so Archangel is set in an almost Orwellian Russia, where the bad guys are so bad that they come over a little cliched and the Russian people become caricatures, almost totally grey and devoid of humanity.

There was real scope in this book to develop an excellent story line to a thrilling conclusion. For me this did not happen in that the conclusion was so predictable that perhaps the description 'thriller' was not an appropriate one. In rushing the second half of the novel and putting so little effort into the conclusion Robert Harris missed a opportunity to make a mediocre novel into an excellent one.

Rating:
Summary: Literate Thriller
Review: English historian Fluke Kelso meets one of Stalin's old bodyguards in a Moscow bar. The old man tells an interesting tale about how he was there the night Stalin died and he knows where Stalin's old notebook is buried. But before Kelso can get the location from the old man, the old man disappears. Together with American correspondent, RJ O'brien, Kelso finds the notebook but it's not what it seems. To uncover the puzzle they must follow the trial to the frozen north of Archangel with Stalin acolytes and a Spetznatz hit squad on their tail.

This is a very literate book for a thriller. Robert Harris knows how to write and he knows how to plot. The action moves along smoothly drawing Kelso ever deeper into the intrigue. Even though we find out the secret halfway through the book it doesn't take away from the enjoyment and the ending. I'd recommend this book highly.