Fall of a Cosmonaut
It's no coincidence that Chief Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, Stuart  Kaminsky's popular Moscow policeman, reads Ed McBain novels. McBain's 87th  Precinct and its denizens are a lot like Kaminsky's Office of Special  Investigation, and in this 13th outing in the author's series featuring  Rostnikov and his colleagues, the parallels are particularly outstanding.  Kaminsky, who also pens the Toby Peters, Abe Lieberman, and Lew Fonseca series,  has published extensively on Hollywood icons such as Gary Cooper and Clint  Eastwood, worth noting because his detectives share many of their qualities and  more than a little of their style.This lively thriller has Rostnikov and his investigators working three cases:  the disappearance of a cosmonaut; the theft of the final negative of a Russian  movie epic on the life of Tolstoy; and the murder of a parapsychologist. Each  offers a handful of suspects, motives, and an opportunity for one of Rostnikov's  detectives to take center stage: the inspector and his son Iosef on the search  for the last survivor of a mission on Mir gone horribly (and secretly) wrong;  Sasha, whose wife and children have left him and whose mother is driving him  crazy, trying to sort out who's behind the extortion attempt on the movie  producer; and Karpo and Zelach, assigned to the murder at the Center for the  Study of Technical Parapsychology, where, to Zelach's dismay, his unusual (and  unwelcome) telepathic gifts are accidentally discovered by a researcher who  won't take no for an answer.In due time, the cases are solved, the loose ends wrapped up, and the lives and  loves of Rostnikov and his men have become as important to the reader as the  guys at the 87th Precinct have become over time to McBain's readers. Both  authors share a mastery of their craft, an unhurried but intellectually  challenging pace, and a gift for characterization that is equaled by few other  writers in the genre.--Jane Adams