Rostnikov's Vacation

Book excerpt: Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop’s vacation: “Kaminsky’s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written” (The San Diego Union-Tribune). Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and recuperation after her surgery, reading American crime novels, and gazing at the Black Sea, the Moscow cop is reasonably content—even if his superiors did insist that he take this vacation. But his time off is destined to be short-lived. A former colleague with emphysema has come south to improve his health. Instead Georgi Vasilievich has dropped dead from what appears to be heart failure. The inspector is not so sure. The local officials want to sweep the incident under the rug. But it turns out Vasilievich was investigating a high-level military conspiracy. Rostnikov takes a look at his files, putting him on the trail of a gang of hardliners who refuse to give up the Soviet dream—and who will go to murderous lengths to ensure that perestroika never comes to pass. With his Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, “Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core—a courtesy he also extends to Moscow, which comes across as a character in its own right: rough and dangerous and somehow tragic” (The New York Times).