From Russia with Blood: EightHoly ThiefReadalikes

Featuring David Benioff, Robert Littell & Tom Rob Smith

Compiled by Jessica Roy & Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 04/08/2010

William Ryan's The Holy Thief will no doubt put your patrons in the mood for more mysteries with Soviet or Russian backdrops. Below, we've selected eight stirring readalikes.

Benioff, David. City of Thieves. Viking. Jun. 2008. 258p. ISBN 978-0-670-01870-3. $24.95. M
Looking for the feel-good World War II book of the year? This tale of two miscreants in Soviet Leningrad might be the one, as Lev and Kolya bumble their way toward locating a dozen eggs for a stern Soviet colonel who needs them for his daughter's wedding cakes. The city is at the gates of starvation (achingly portrayed in realistic detail), so the boys set out into the enemy-occupied countryside. Delivering the eggs will release them from their death sentences, as Lev was caught looting the body of a downed German paratrooper and Kolya deserted his unit to visit girlfriends. Coming upon partisan cadres and Germans, they find little success in their perilous saga. With deftly sly humor, respect for the agony of warfare, and dialog that elevates the boys-to-men story beyond its typical male ribaldry, this second novel (after The 25th Hour) by screenwriter Benioff (The Kite Runner) deserves a bright spotlight in most libraries to attract readers young and old to its compelling pages.—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Dryden, Alex. Red to Black. Ecco. Sept. 2009. 373p. ISBN 978-0-06-180386-4. $25. M
Set in post-glasnost Russia and spilling into Western Europe, this superb debut novel by a pseudonymous British journalist tells the tale of star-crossed lovers who spy for opposing sides. Anna is a KGB colonel, Finn a spy for Britain's MI6. They meet in Moscow, where Anna is ordered to seduce him. Their superiors on both sides eavesdrop on their most intimate conversations; they can never trust that what they say won't come back to hurt them. They fall in love anyway and begin a covert campaign to halt Putin's efforts to use Russia's newfound oil wealth to dominate Europe. (Putin is definitely the bad guy here.) VERDICT This reviewer has never read a novel that captures so well what it must be like to live in a world where one party constantly lies to the other, knowing the other will see it as a lie and lie back in return. An exceptional novel by any standard; readers who enjoy a love story mixed with their espionage (à la le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl) will appreciate. [Library marketing; previewed in Wilda Williams's "The Great Escape," LJ 4/15/09 and Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/09. Ed.]—David Keymer

Eastland, Sam. Eye of the Red Tsar. Bantam. Apr. 2010. 288p. ISBN 978-0-553-80781-3. $25. M
Pekkala, a young recruit in the Finnish Garrison, catches the eye of Tsar Nicholas II for his upright bearing and regard for horses. Pekkala eventually becomes the tsar's chief and most respected detective. When the Bolsheviks seize power in 1917, the tsar and his family are eventually murdered, and Pekkala is exiled to a remote corner of Siberia. This debut thriller is the story of how Pekkala is transformed into Stalin's foremost investigator after masterfully locating the murdered tsar's treasure trove. VERDICT There are enough facts woven into the fiction to make this account of the Romanov assassination gripping and memorable. Mining an era also inhabited by the awesomely popular Erast Fandorin, Boris Akunin's tsarist detective, Eastland is succinct yet deeply affecting as he captures truthful emotions in depicting humanity's lust for power and gold. Fans of Russian thrillers will want this. Buy multiple copies for summer reading suggestions at your library.—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Harris, Robert. Archangel. Random. Jan. 1999. 373p. ISBN 978-0-679-42888-6. $24.95. M
Harris's first novel, Fatherland (LJ 4/1/92), an international best seller, supposed that Hitler had won World War II. His second, Enigma (LJ 10/1/95), another success, hinged on code-breaking in the same war. In Archangel, Harris switches to modern, unstable Russia and raises another what-if--suppose a very real pro-Stalinist cult wanted to bring "back" to power one of Stalin's sons. A discredited Oxford historian and an American TV journalist stumble over papers suggesting such a possibility. They stay barely one jump ahead of sinister competing forces in pursuing a twisting tale that keeps the reader turning pages almost past the bizarre surprises at the end. A former journalist and author of several nonfiction works, Harris skillfully mixes historical detail and fiction. This is likely to be as big a hit as the earlier two suspense tales, and libraries everywhere should be prepared. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/98.]--Roland C. Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Littell, Robert. The Stalin Epigram. S&S. May 2009. 366p. ISBN 978-1-4165-9864-0. $26. M
Littell's forte has been novels portraying the ambiguous and treacherous world of espionage (e.g., The Company). In a genre-busting switch, he slips into the skin of Osip Mandelstam, Russia's premier poet of the early 20th century. Mandelstam's verses first supported the Bolshevik Revolution but then turned in disgust from its bloodthirstiness. Mandelstam paid a high price for his poem of conscience, The Stalin Epigram, which eviscerated Stalin with lines like "His cockroach whiskers leer." Using Mandelstam's widow, Nadezhda, herself a famous chronicler of the Soviet era, as a narrator, along with the voices of fellow writers Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, Littell re-creates the five crucial months that saw Mandelstam's creation emerge only to condemn its maker to a wretched death en route to the Gulag in 1938. Though the Cold War is long over, Littell, who met privately with Nadezhda in 1979, has resurrected the totalitarian Soviet Union in all its cruel and capricious dimensions. This novel will be treasured long after the derring-do of espionage tales is forgotten. Highly recommended, especially for readers who value poetry and its intersection with the world of power and ambition. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/09.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Smith, Marie Cruz. Stalin’s Ghost. S. & S. Jun. 2007. 333p. ISBN 978-0-7432-7672-6. $26.95. M
Detective Arkady Renko, now making his sixth appearance (after Wolves Eat Dogs), is embroiled in a strange case featuring witnesses who claim to have seen Joseph Vissarionovich (that is, the late dictator Stalin) in the Moscow Metro. Balancing contradictory and barely conscious influences ranging from the attractions of his new lover, Eva, to harsh pressures from his long-dead military father, Arkady probes deeper into the case and finds a wily political campaign at the heart of the sightings. While the plot goes on to be nastily Byzantine, and the view of contemporary Moscow is painstakingly real, what makes this deathfest a graceful reflection of human passion is the matching arcs of the lives of Arkady and Zhenya, a 12-year-old runaway who finds safe harbor with Arkady. Be sure your library has all five other books in the series in ample supply because readers will be stripping the shelves. For all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/07.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Smith, Tom Rob. Child 44. Grand Central. Apr. 2008. 439p. ISBN 978-0-446-40238-5. $24.99. M
Grisly, gruesome, and gory are just three ways to describe this debut novel by young British screenwriter Smith. While adapting a short story by sf writer Jeff Noon, Smith came across the true account of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who after killing more than 50 women and children was executed in 1994. His story inspired Smith to write this grim, 1953-set novel, which ties together just about all of the worst aspects of the Stalinist regime. The Ukrainian famine and the unrelieved horror of the gulag, among other historical hooks, add to the saga of ex-soldier and police official Leo Demidov, who dissects the morbid clues left by the killer. The paradox of crime in a workers' paradise denies any legitimacy to Leo's investigation, since, by definition, such repellent crimes are impossible. With some 20 foreign sales to date and film rights already in Ridley Scott's hands, this successor to Hannibal Lector's lurid mantle has nonstop plotting, a nonstop pace, and even a surprise ending. Horror genre readers will thrill to it; others may be advised to ask for a barf bag as well as their date due slip. Suspense collections in large libraries will likely need several copies to fill waiting lists. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/08.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Smith, Tom Rob. The Stalin Speech. Grand Central. May 2009. 407p. ISBN 978-0-446-40240-8. $24.99. M
The main characters introduced in Smith's debut, Child 44, continue their ferocious saga to find love and consolation against a backdrop of the totalitarian Soviet state. In 1956, copies of Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech are delivered to officials responsible for the purges and repressions, thus releasing a new round of murders and suicides. At the same time, a second plot twines with the first as ex-lovers from "Child 44" grapple in a macabre contest of vengeance and hate. Smith has proven his brutal touch when describing human conflict. With this thriller, he offers a fierce account of fighting onboard a storm-wracked prison ship on the Sea of Okhotska hair-raising scene, alone worth the cost of the book. For all popular collections; be ready for short-term demand owing to heavy promotion. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/09.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA