The Twelfth Department (Captain Alexei Korolev)
*Starred Review* Moscow police detective Captain Alexei Korolev is a loyal Russian who fought in the German War (WWI). He’s also a committed Marxist who fought the Whites to overthrow the czar. But it’s now 1937, Stalin’s Great Purge is accelerating, and Korolev struggles to reconcile his loyalties with the gnawing fear every Russian is feeling. Even worse, his ex-wife is under suspicion, and his young son, Yuri, who is visiting him for a week, is telling him about the teacher who is asking Yuri leading questions about his mother’s loyalty. When the director of a secret research institute is murdered, Korolev finds himself working for a department of the NKVD—and being menaced by another department. A second murder, doubtless connected to the first, occurs. Korolev is savagely beaten by an NKVD hard case. His apartment is searched. Yuri goes missing, and Korolev fears that he and everyone he cares about will simply disappear. Ryan’s latest (following The Darkening Field, 2011) has a fine cast of characters, puzzling murders, interesting police work, and a strong sense of the terror that pervaded Stalin’s Russia. But it is his eye for period detail (e.g., scheming apparatchiks who denounce a neighbor simply to move into a larger apartment) that makes this one special. --Thomas Gaughan