Red Chameleon - Softcover

Stuart M. Kaminsky

4.11

481 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804104654 ISBN 13: 9780804104654

Publisher: Ivy, 1989

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The violent and inexplicable murder of an old man in his bathtub and the theft of a worthless candlestick send Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov on a hunt into the past . . .

A ring of car thieves with a taste for expensive vehicles is at large in Moscow's streets . . .

High above the gray city, a sniper is taking aim at police officers, and the obsessed detective Emil Karpo takes the assignment to heart . . .

"Kaminsky works up plenty of sweaty-palmed suspense of the best sort, built out of equal parts of likeable characters and believable dangers."

Washington Post Book World

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About the Author:

Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, Kaminsky penned more than sixty novels over his lifetime. In 1981's Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. He died in St. Louis in 2009.

From Publishers Weekly:

What is the connection between a psychotic woman carrying a trombone case for most unmusical purposes through the streets of Moscow and the theft of the deputy procurator's much-prized automobile? How does the slaying of a young policeman by a sniper relate to the murder of aged Abraham as he reads Izvestia in the bathtub, by intruders who steal a worthless brass candlestick on their way out? And why is it that Abraham's crippled daughter Sofiya is driven by ambivalent feelings toward her dead father? These are among the conundrums confronting Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov of the Moscow Procurator's Office as he trudges painfully through his rounds (like Sofiya, he has a game leg), teasing humorless underlings, sparring with members of the KGB, squinting jaundice-eyed into the cobwebbed corners of the political establishment, where no light shines. Despite a certain ungainliness in scenes of action, the narrative moves easily to an unhappily credible, ironic conclusion. And Rostnitkov, his hopes of emigration with his Jewish wife dashed, faces yet another professional setback with stoic resignation. Following Black Knight in Red Square, this is the fourth novel in a series featuring the appealing, amiable, sore-beset Inspector. n.b. This book is not to be confused with the Bantam paperback of the same title (Paperback Forecasts, Sept. 27), also to be published in November. November
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