Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express: A Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov Novel
Penzler Pick,December 2001:This is  a compulsively readable tour de force that keeps more balls in the air than a  pitching machine. On top of that, in this 14th novel featuring the one-legged  Moscow cop Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Stuart Kaminsky once again catapults us  straight from our armchairs into the mindset of modern Russia in all its  perverse dysfunctions.Kaminsky must have had fun cooking up the plotlines, which ingeniously plunder  the storage bins of mystery history. There's everything from a Jane the Ripper  to homages to train-bound thrillers likeThe Lady Vanishes,North by Northwest, and the  more obviousMurder on the Orient  Express. At the same time, there's the conscious, skillfully presented  element of social realism, an aspect that never intruded into the action of any  of those tales. Kaminsky is wonderfully artful at conveying the pervasive  cynicism that comes with the territory at all strata of existence in the former  Soviet Union, and he does it without ever being repetitious. At an organic  level, it seeps into and informs every level of the mystery as it unfolds.One must marvel at the manipulations of the political and legal systems engaged  in by Chief Inspector Rostnikov and his dedicated colleagues as they endeavor to  deliver the semblance of a not-always-welcome law and order. To top it off,  there are some terrific set-piece scenes, such as when the policeman Zelach  reveals his unexpected familiarity with heavy-metal arcana as he and his partner  interrogate some punks about a missing pal.Kaminsky won the Edgar Allan Poe award in 1989 for the Rostnikov mysteryA Cold Red Sunrise. ReadingMurder on the Trans-Siberian Express, it's not hard to understand why,  only difficult to know how he keeps the series' quality so high.--Otto  Penzler