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Rating: 
Summary: The audio is a butchered version of the book...worthless.
Review: As with all abridgements, this version by Sunset is very badly edited, and leaves out significant parts of the book that make it the 4star work it is. Whoever does these abridgements has no literary sense at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Colorful Moscow corruption and crime
Review: Edgar Award-winner Kaminsky's Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov novel resonates with the "new capitalist" corruption and crime of modern Moscow.Four cases send the inspector's team, augmented by black American FBI agent Craig Hamilton, assigned as an observor, delving into Moscow's seamiest and loftiest environs. Inspectors Tkach and Zelach troll the slums for the extremely youthful killers of a drunk - only very young killers would have no guns. Inexperienced policewoman Elena Timofeyeva is, to her surprise, assigned to investigate the disappearance (after a tax-police raid) of a houseful of Czarist treasures worth billions of rubles. The enigmatic, dour Inspector Karpo, a devout communist, pursues the "Mafia" thugs involved in a street shooting which killed Karpo's lover. And for himself, Rostnikov keeps the case of the kidnapped capitalist. With Hamilton in tow, Rostnikov grapples with the police methods of East and West, borrowing when it suits him. The mystery and challenge of survival in chaotic Moscow is as much the focus here as the various plot lines. Politics and bribery exert strong pressures as do crowded homes filled with troublesome relatives and smelling of poor food. Kaminsky's laconic tone and colorful prose bring the city and its denizens to life - an often bleak and ruthless portrait. His story is deeply absorbing, full of character nuance and irony.
Rating:
Summary: Colorful Moscow corruption and crime
Review: Edgar Award-winner Kaminsky's Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov novel resonates with the "new capitalist" corruption and crime of modern Moscow. Four cases send the inspector's team, augmented by black American FBI agent Craig Hamilton, assigned as an observor, delving into Moscow's seamiest and loftiest environs. Inspectors Tkach and Zelach troll the slums for the extremely youthful killers of a drunk - only very young killers would have no guns. Inexperienced policewoman Elena Timofeyeva is, to her surprise, assigned to investigate the disappearance (after a tax-police raid) of a houseful of Czarist treasures worth billions of rubles. The enigmatic, dour Inspector Karpo, a devout communist, pursues the "Mafia" thugs involved in a street shooting which killed Karpo's lover. And for himself, Rostnikov keeps the case of the kidnapped capitalist. With Hamilton in tow, Rostnikov grapples with the police methods of East and West, borrowing when it suits him. The mystery and challenge of survival in chaotic Moscow is as much the focus here as the various plot lines. Politics and bribery exert strong pressures as do crowded homes filled with troublesome relatives and smelling of poor food. Kaminsky's laconic tone and colorful prose bring the city and its denizens to life - an often bleak and ruthless portrait. His story is deeply absorbing, full of character nuance and irony.
Rating:
Summary: outstanding post soviet russia
Review: Most writers of mystery in Soviet Russia are boring without the KGB "badguy" holding their hero back. Kaminsky does a terrific job with the new problems of Russia. Read his series from the beginning as the character development from book to book is worth it!
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