*Steinhauer,
Olen. Liberation Movements. St. Martin's Minotaur. Aug 2006.
c.340p. ISBN 0-312-33204-1. $24.95. Fiction.
This fourth entry in Steinhauer’s (The
Bridge of Sighs)
Eastern Bloc crime series deposits us in the late
summer of 1968, as "the
flowers of Prague’s spring" are being crushed by
the Warsaw pact’s invading tanks. In [1975], in a nearby
unnamed country, Brano Sev of the Ministry of State Security,
the protagonist of 36 Yalta Boulevard, is now a colonel
in his late fifties. He and his officers, Capt. Gavra Noukas
and homicide inspector Katja Drdova, all have secrets to hide
and a major crime to solve. Armenian hijackers have blown up
an airplane in route to Istanbul, aboard which was
a fellow officer of Armenian origin. Was the Ministry involved
in the plane’s
destruction? Is there a connection to a crime committed seven
years earlier? To find the answers, Gavra and Katja must confront
their own demons. Using alternating time lines, reverse
chronology, and disrupted sequence, Steinhauer again displays
his masterful manipulation of character, plot, and reader
expectations. Tightly entwined story lines, compact scenes
that evoke a grim world while capturing character subtleties,
and a style pared to the essential make this a fast, intriguing
read. Highly recommended.