description: Ace historian Donald James, who wrote the script for the excellent PBS series Russia's War and whose book The Fall of the Russian Empire is a fine guide to recent past events, projects his expertise into the near future to create a chaotic, completely believable landscape of terror and frustration in this memorable thriller. It's 2015, and Russia--racked by civil wars since the fall of the Yeltsin government and its short-lived liberal successors--is under the strong grip of leader Leonid Koba. A melancholy, alcoholic (are there any other kind?), provincial policeman named Vadim is shipped from Murmansk to a bombed-out district of Moscow, ostensibly to investigate the brutal murders of women credited to a demonlike killer called the Monstrum. But what the people in power really want from the increasingly desperate Vadim is something completely different--his resemblance to Koba and his connection to the woman who led the defeated rebels.
language: English
title: Monstrum Advanced Reader
titlecomplete: Monstrum Advanced Reader
characters: constantin Vadim
genres: Fiction, Historical, Mystery, Thriller, Detective, Mystery Thriller, Historical Fiction, Crime, Russia
ratings_count: 385
series: Constantin Vadim
publisher: Villard Books