Two Leaps Across a Chasm: A Russian Mystery

The near death of Serge Orlovsky reunites him with an old classmate, Moscow physician Uri Kirilov, but the reunion is undermined by the mysterious involvement of the police and KGB officials.

Firsthand insights into the paradoxes of glasnost and perestroika aid but add no luster to this mystery of corruption in the Gorbachev-era Soviet Union, written by a former Moscow police investigator. Journalist Sergei Orlovsky travels to Arshalsk to uncover a scandal in the militia and quickly finds himself in mortal danger. With the help of boyhood friend Yuri Kirilov, a Moscow obstetrician, Orlovsky evades his pursuers and returns to Moscow to publish an expose. But the article is squelched, all copies mysteriously confiscated, and both Orlovsky and Kirilov come in for scrutiny from detective Lt. Col. Voshko. When Voshko in turn finds himself under investigation, these three men learn that the scandal reaches far beyond Arshalsk to involve the Mafia, black marketeers, the Nomenklatura, generals and top government officials. In the telling of this story, however, Aleksandrov and Olcott create little suspense and much confusion. Many characters--especially the conspirators--are rendered so superficially that one blends into another. Weighted further by a languid narrative voice and a muddled denouement, this disappointing and already dated first novel simply has too much to overcome.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A melancholy farce, obviously written with an eye on Gogol, about the untidy coverup of a Kremlin scandal--first US publication for this Russian criminologist/journalist. The beginning seems formulaic enough: Moscow women's doctor Uri Kirilov, after getting a cryptic phone call from investigative reporter Sergei Orlovsky, an old school friend, reluctantly flies to a rendezvous in far-off Arshalsk, only to find that Orlovsky's disappeared and that somebody--somebody official--is listening in on Kirilov's phone calls, following him around, and commandeering his hotel room in the dead of night. Inquiries about Orlovsky naturally turn up nothing but tantalizing hints about a story he was writing about two popular local militiamen who were abruptly dismissed after lodging complaints about purges by General Anarin. If this all seems like Hitchcock, it's the comic Hitchcock that Aleksandrov seems to have in mind, since when the militiamen do turn up--followed by Orlovsky--their stories add up only to a mishmash of accusations about ranks upon ranks of interchangeable high-ups; and then Lt. Col. Yosif Petrovich Vashko, who's been stalking Kirilov, turns out to have problems of his own, as he's casually betrayed by General Kisilev, his patron in the militia, and turned into the story's real, and most unlikely, hero: a cowboy who'll follow the clues--a photo of an apparatchik with a giant lobster, another showing Orlovsky impossibly dead, and scores of nonsensical conversations--to a wistful climax in which nobody gets hurt. A true original: the shaggiest tale of cloak and dagger you're ever likely to read. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When Moscow investigative journalist Sergei Orlovsky calls upon doctor/friend Uri Kirilov for help, Kirilov also becomes involved in a complicated political scandal that may prove fatal. Phone taps, surveillance, peremptory orders from higher-ups, disappearing journal articles, incriminating photographs, multiple sets of agents, and the apparent death of Orlovsky all add to the complexity. While Olcott's prose is smoothly written, it cannot clear away the confusing mess of petty intrigue. Skip this.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.