SASHA'S TRICK

In the infamous prison camp at Kolpashevo, an old thief whispers a secret in a young thief's ear. It's a tale of a fabulous cache of art twice plundered, first by the Nazis, then by the conquering Red Army. Twenty years later, the pair reunite on the teeming, blistering sands of Brooklyn's Coney Island beach. Instants later, a shower of bullets sends the younger thief - the hustler, charmer, and survivor known as Sasha - on a breathtaking odyssey through a frighteningly transfigured post-cold war world.
Shuttling between the chaos of Moscow, where gangsters and ex-commissars are fighting over communism's frozen corpse, and the anarchic streets of New York, where the Russian Mob is fattening itself on capitalism's easy pickings, Sasha hunts for a treasure more precious and far deadlier than stolen art. He scrambles to save his life from forces more savage than those he had once dreaded in the now-dead Soviet Union while holding on to what remains of his Russian-Jewish soul. He struggles to escape the trap closing in on him while the bodies - of enemies, mentors, and lovers - pile up on every side. With the help of a boy computer genius and a beautiful American reporter with an ambitious agenda of her own, he may pull it off. And if he does, it will be Sasha's greatest trick of all.

Sasha Eugenev is nothing if not a survivor. At age 19, arrested for "parasitism," he's sentenced to hard labor in a remote Russian prison camp, where one of his fellow prisoners promises to share a hidden cache of art worth millions--if he and Sasha survive the rigors of prison. Finally released, Sasha immigrates to New York, where he eventually meets up with his prison-camp compatriot. But before the two can put their hands on the art, Sasha's friend is shot to death; on the run, Sasha learns that the Russian mafia is after the art, too--specifically, an enameled box that Sasha's friend gave him just before he died. Rosenbaum offers up a heady dose of suspense, intrigue, danger, and romance combined with a fascinating (if rather bleak) look at the "new" Russia. Readers with a fondness for such fare will find themselves riveted. A good choice for the spy-thriller crowd. Emily Melton