Dead Meat - Softcover

Kerr, Philip

3.39

285 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385254660 ISBN 13: 9780385254663

Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 1994

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One of the most talked about writers in England today, chosen by the literary magazine Granta as one of the "Best of Young British Novelists" for the 1990s, Philip Kerr in his fifth novel explores the twilight landscape of St. Petersburg and the haunted, driven souls who inhabit it.
In contemporary Russia the only paint is green, toilet paper costs a week's pension, and dead lightbulbs are a precious commodity. This is the world inhabited by a nameless, cuckolded Moscow investigator, a lawyer by training, who is sent to St. Petersburg to seek out possible corruption in the Central Investigating Board.
The man from Moscow finds himself teamed up with a gruff, seemingly honest inspector named Grushko in the investigation of the murder of a famous journalist. To the St. Petersburg cops, and in particular the single-minded Grushko, the crime is obviously the work of the Russian Mafia, a combative and bloodthirsty league of Georgian, Azerbaijani, Ukrainian, and Chechen criminals who deal in everything from fake Rolexes to stolen meat. ("We'll never defeat the Mafia," one policeman says. "It's the one thing in this country that actually works.")
Then hoodlums suddenly start dying and Grushko and his shadow from Moscow must surmount their own doubts about each other to solve a crime that goes well beyond Milyukin's murder.
Set against the sad, beautiful backdrop of a once grand city now populated by an extraordinary cast of cops, hard-currency whores, materialistic yuppies, pimps, and "made men," Dead Meat is a superb, hard-edged suspense thriller. And with its echoes of Dostoyevsky, it is also an unforgettable literary journey through the strange and blood-soaked landscape where everyone is guilty of something, and punishment comes in many forms.

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From the Inside Flap:

EVERYONE IS GUILTY OF SOMETHING... In comtemporary Russia the old ghosts have been laid to rest, but the stench of corruption is just as strong as ever. Now a top-level Moscow investigator, dispatched to St. Petersburg, is about to discover just how deep the decadence runs--in both the corridors of power and the labyrinth of the human heart. The man from Moscow has been teamed up with Grushko, a palm-reading local detective with Elvis Presley hair. Together they embark on a investigation into the brutal murder of a famous and controversial journalist. To Grushko, an expert in the ruthlessness of the rising Russian Mafia, the killing has all the earmarks of a professional hit. But in the new Russia appearances have almost as little value as the new ruble. Soon the focus of the investigation will fall on the journalist's widow, a pinup beauty whom one detective will find impossible to trust...the other to resist

From Publishers Weekly:

Kerr's most recent novel, A Philosophical Investigation , takes place in England in the near future, while his three-volume Bernhard Gunther series, begun with March Violets , is set in 1930s Berlin. Here he turns to modern-day Russia to trace an electrifying battle between the anemically funded Russian police and well-heeled ethnic Mafiosi who operate at will in post-Soviet St. Petersburg. An anonymous narrator--an Internal Affairs-type lawyer--monitors detective Yevgeni Ivanovich Grushko's efforts to nail mob thugs for the murder of an investigative journalist who had aired Mafia laundry and government scandal on TV. Grushko rousts the Ukrainian and Chechen mobsters, who rival the Georgians in the proliferation of scams, protection rackets and black-market action marking Russia's emerging private-sector economy. Struggling to investigate amid such impediments as red tape, public distrust of police, KGB rivalry, low police morale and minimal resources, Grushko even appeals for leads on a Geraldo Rivera-like show. While the detective inches toward a resolution connecting the Chernobyl disaster, the mob and a British-backed Russian capitalist venture, the narrator falls for the journalist's sexy widow and learns hard lessons from Grushko about fighting for justice in an unhinged society. In Kerr's literate dark novel, strains of romantic balalaika music blend with the sound of the sharp wind sweeping across the steppes. Readers will hope for more appearances of this new man from Moscow.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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