My Weekly Book

This book has to do something very difficult, which is to follow up Fatherland. The premise is, on the surface, quite different - rather than being set in an alternative reality where history worked out differently, it is firmly rooted in post-Cold War Moscow, with the former Soviet Union crumbling round the ears of its protagonists, still unsure of its new place in the world.

Historian Christopher 'Fluke' Kelso is a thoroughly flaky figure with a 'resting' career, money troubles and a lot of enemies in academia. He thinks he has the answer to all his problems when a labour-camp survivor comes to see him with a tale of Stalin's diary and private papers buried in a cherry orchard. Of course Fluke, who has always been lucky hence the name, thinks he is onto a winner.

He embarks on a ham-fisted and whisky-fuelled attempt to find them which naturally gets him into much hotter water than he had thought possible. Of course, it's all a huge conspiracy on a continental scale, and the historian is so out of his depth that he's done the equivalent of going for a refreshing little dip over the Mariana Trench. Without giving away too many vital plot details, the unravelling tale does turn out to have a couple of striking similarities to Fatherland - and is none the worse for it.

I could not put this thriller down, which is the way I like them, and the way they should be. Highly recommended reading, Harris truly is a master of the genre. And so on to Enigma.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2004 at 12:25 pm and is filed under 2004 - Books read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.