A welcome return to post-revolutionary Kyiv for another police procedural featuring fledgling investigator Samson Kolechko.
A novice investigator faces more crimes to solve in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution.
This second novel in a series returns to Kyiv in 1919. Less dramatic and violent than its predecessor, The Silver Bone (2024), it portrays a still uncertain but maturing Samson Kolechko in the early days of his career as an improbable police investigator. This time, alongside defrocked priest Sergius Kholodny, he’s pursuing participants in the illegal trade of meat, a precious commodity in a city plagued by material deprivation, whose inhabitants subsist, at best, on pork fat and pies filled with animal intestines. Under constant pressure from his commander, Nayden, and shadowed by Abyazov, an emissary from the Cheka, the dreaded secret police, Samson pursues his investigation fitfully, guided mainly by information he receives from Moses Briskin, the suspected meat dealer who’s hauled from detention for periodic interrogations. A series of thefts from police offices also divert the investigators for a time. Samson finds himself in a deepening relationship with Nadezhda, employed by the Provincial Bureau of Statistics, who’s imperiled by her involvement in a census of railway workers. They seamlessly, and appealingly, make the transition from roommates to awkward romantic partners. Samson remains haunted by the memory of the Cossack attack that took his father’s life and cost him his right ear, retaining the severed body part in a tin of sweets in his flat. For all the bleakness of its characters’ lives, the novel has some lighter moments, like the training session that instructs Samson and Kholodny on the proper technique for blowing cigarette smoke into the faces of interrogation subjects. Though the stakes here are not as high as in its predecessor, Samson is a companionable protagonist who manages to seem both part of the nascent political system and at a slight remove from it, and this story’s conclusion lays the groundwork for future adventures in his grim, but intriguing, world.
A welcome return to post-revolutionary Kyiv for another police procedural featuring fledgling investigator Samson Kolechko.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780063352339
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
