Monstrum

The publisher compares James's new thriller to Fatherland and Gorky Park; but even more than those genre classics, this literate, robust novel emphasizes milieu over crime and punishment. The setting is a rigorously detailed and utterly believable Moscow of 2015, where newly arrived police inspector Constantin Vadim, who narrates, is assigned to investigate a series of mutilation slayings of young women. Vadim's pursuit of the killer--dubbed the Monstrum--takes a back seat, however, to political intrigue, for the cop has been brought to Moscow from the provinces not for his sleuthing abilities but because he can double, as a lookalike, for Leonid Koba, the strongman who has arisen from Russia's recent civil war. The intrigue thickens when Vadim's ex-wife, an anarchist general on the war's losing side and now a fugitive, seeks his help to escape the country, and it condenses when Vadim learns that she has been involved in an assassination attempt on Koba. Some subsequent plot twists defy credulity, but James (The Fall of the Russian Empire), who in the 1970s wrote TV scripts for Mission Impossible and The Avengers, knows how to build suspense and to cross-stitch a colorful plot. He expertly knots Vadim's hunt for the Monstrum into larger sociopolitical issues. The narrative is consistently engaging, driven by the self-lacerating voice of Vadim, a charismatic womanizer and alcoholic, who unflinchingly appraises his fellow Russians (a power-drunk secret policeman, a crafty whore and a venal priest are among the memorable secondary characters here) and their beloved, ravaged land. 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo. (Aug.)