Stuart M. Kaminsky

Review: Not Quite Kosher

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Not Quite Kosher

Not Quite Kosher (Abe Lieberman, 7), Stuart M. Kaminsky. Forge Books (ISBN: 9781429912631) 2002

Summary: Lieberman juggles two murder cases, one with multiple deaths including a cop, a bar mitzvah, a partner’s wedding and more.

Sometimes a lot of life happens at once. At home, Lieberman is involved in bar mitzvah plans for his grandson, mainly in figuring out how to stretch the family budget to pay for everything and leave something to repair the roof. Meanwhile, his partner Hanrahan is moving up his wedding date to marry Iris Chin–to this week, with a reception at the Liebermans! This, despite Iris’s family disapproval and threats which Lieberman cleverly handles through the leader of one of Chicago’s gangs. And he even manages to book Senator Joe Lieberman (no relation) to speak for a synagogue fund-raiser.

Then there is the work. A group of young thugs attacks a depressed store owner. Only it doesn’t turn out so well. The man, Arnold Sokol, defends himself well enough to chase two of the young men off and land the other in the hospital. Lieberman and his rabbi help settle things with the young man in the hospital, or so they think. But the next day, Sokol’s badly beaten body washes up in the lake.

Actually, that’s just one of two bodies that wash up. The other is a man called Pryor, involved in Lieberman’s other case. Him and Michael Wychovski rob a jewelry store–the same one they robbed a year ago. Only this time, things don’t turn out so well. On the way out, Pryor stumbles and his gun goes off, killing the owner. Then, while Wychovski drives, he fires on pursuing police, killing one of them. But they manage to elude capture-until Pryor’s body washes up along with Sokol’s.

I love the great relationship between Lieberman and Hanrahan, punctuated with food stops and ever-present reminders about Lieberman’s cholesterol. Each has gotten the other out of trouble on more than one occasion. I also love the philosophic decency of Lieberman–his companionable marriage, his acceptance of his difficult daughter, and his loyalty to his brother Maish and the alter cockers. He’s a man people trust, from Kearney, his boss to a somewhat unstable gang leader.

The reader trusts him as well, even to catching the real killer of Arnold Sokol. My only regret is that Kaminsky only wrote ten installments in this series. Having read most of the Rostnikov and Lieberman stories, perhaps it’s time to check out Toby Peters and Lew Fonseca, his two other crime solvers.

Review: Black Knight in Red Square

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Black Knight in Red Square, (Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, 2), Stuart M. Kaminsky. Mysterious Press/Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781453269589) 2012 (first published in 1984).

Summary: Rostnikov’s team races to stop a terrorist organization from causing mayhem at an international film festival.

An International Film Festival is about to open in Moscow. Journalists and filmmakers from all over the world are gathering. And four men, an American, a Japanese, and two Russians who ate together are dead in their rooms, all killed by a deadly poison. Rostnikov and his team get the case. Results are expected swiftly, both from within his own bureaucracy and from the KGB. His nemesis there, Colonel Drozhkin is looking for a way to bring Rostnikov down. In sum, the potential for career-ending failure is great.

Rostnikov and Karpo meet with the widow of the American, who doesn’t seem especially bereaved. They later learn that the real widow is in Australia. They realize that they likely had met the person behind the killings, who was taking their measure. And that signals that the poisonings were a mere prelude. Karpo, in his methodical way, devotes himself to tracking her down.

They figure out she has recruited a German journalist and a British filmmaker to help her. Tkach and Rostnikov track them while the team tries to unravel her ultimate scheme, which is to bomb key Moscow sites, including Lenin’s tomb.

Amid this, Rostnikov pursues a strategy to counter Drozhkin and get something he deeply desires. And he squeezes in a personal goal–to compete in a weightlifting competition, despite an injured leg. To the surprise of judges, he wins, wowing them by a humorous but impressive mistake.

There is an element of suspense in the effort to prevent acts in which the terrorists have the initiative. At the same time, we get to watch a subtler form of intrigue play out between Rostnikov and Drozhkin. It all makes for an exciting conclusion to a well plotted mystery. Meanwhile, we find ourselves caring for each of those on Rostnikov’s team, any who may be the target of a woman who will not hesitate to kill any in her way.

Review: Lieberman’s Choice

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Cover image of "Lieberman's Choice" by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Lieberman’s Choice (Abe Lieberman Number 2), Stuart M. Kaminsky. Open Road Media (ASIN: B00AYRI5HY) 2013 (first published 1993).

Summary: A cop kills his wife and the cop who is sleeping with her, and threatens to blow up a city block unless one demand is met.

Abe Lieberman can’t get to sleep. And then the phone rings. A fellow policeman walked into his apartment with a loaded shotgun and blew away his wife and the cop she was sleeping with. When his partner, recently “on the wagon” arrives, the scene is so awful he needs a drink. The officer, Bernie Shepard, has barricaded himself on the roof with his dog. He’s armed to the teeth. And he’s rigged up enough explosives to blow away not only the building but a city block.

Abe is the first one who talks to him and size up the situation. Shepard wants a TV reporter to interview him. Eventually, he gets his wish. He has one demand. Specifically, he wants to talk to Captain Alan Kearney at midnight, after a day-long siege. In his mind, Kearney is the one who had corrupted his wife.

There are lots of people who want to make this go away as quickly as possible, from a mayor facing re-election to the chief of police. And there are the civilians. First, a couple of hard-up bounty seekers living in the building attempt an assault on the rooftop nest only to end up splattered on the street below. Then a gang leader who Shepard had arrested wants to take a crack. Incredibly, they let him and he manages to wound Shepard. But Shepard has positioned himself so well that no chopper, no sniper, can take him out.

If Lieberman had his choice, he’d just hang out with the Alter Cockers at his brother Maish’s deli. Or he would be home with his family. Instead, he is on point negotiating with a man who has already killed four–one who has nothing left to lose. And if that is not enough, he has to deal with a religious crazy, Frankie Kraylaw. who is abusing his wife.

As the hours tick down and the pressure increases, will they find a way to avoid a confrontation with Kearney or a catastrophic explosion? Amid it all, Lieberman, the veteran of Chicago’s streets seems the wisest and sanest. But will it be enough?

Review: Lieberman’s Day

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Cover image of "Lieberman's Day" by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Lieberman’s Day, Stuart M. Kaminsky. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781480400207) 2013 (first published in 1994).

Summary: Abe’s nephew is killed and his wife shot in a mugging while a murderer stalks the abused ex-wife Hanrahan is sheltering.

Moments after walking out the door from a dinner party on a cold winter night, David Lieberman and his wife Carol confront two muggers. Things go awry and one mugger shoots David, the other, Carol. David dies, but Carol, critically wounded and pregnant, survives. Abe Lieberman, who hasn’t yet fallen asleep gets the call at 12:02 am. David is Abe’s nephew.

The book chronicles the next twenty-four hours as Abe, and his recovering-alcoholic partner Bill Hanrahan track down the killers. At the same time, Abe must try to comfort his brother and sister-in-law in the loss of their son, drawing on the help of his tight-knit Jewish community, including the Alter Cockers, a group of older men who hang out at his brother’s diner.

Abe relies on his street connections, cutting a deal with El Perro, a drug kingpin, to find the killers. Shooting a pregnant woman is an offense even to them. Meanwhile Hanrahan learns that the violent ex-husband of an abused woman and her son, who he has sheltered, is back in town. Will Hanrahan find him before he finds them?

Both men also struggle with domestic issues. Abe’s daughter’s marriage has broken up but now she struggles as her former husband is seeing another woman. Abe is loyal to his daughter while liking the father of his grandchild. He’s met the woman he’s seeing and likes her as well. Bill’s wife walked out some time ago. Despite a relationship with an Asian woman who is ready for more, he cannot let go.

Meanwhile the plot is building toward double climaxes in Bill’s apartment and Carol’s hospital room. For one of the killers, Carol, while alive, is a threat.

This is a relatively short novel. The fast-paced double plot unfolds in the span of one very long day during a very cold Chicago winter. Amid all this, I enjoyed Lieberman’s street-savvy wisdom combined with the restraint that accompanies others in their grief, never saying the stupid thing.

Review: The Last Dark Place

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Cover image of "The Last Dark Place" by Stuart Kaminsky

The Last Dark Place (Abe Lieberman #8), Stuart M. Kaminsky. Mysterious Press/Open Road Media (ASIN: B00AYRI5DI), 2013 (originally published in 2004).

Summary: Who ordered the hit on the hitman? That’s what Lieberman, who was transporting him back to Chicago tries to figure out as he tries to head off a gang war and pay for his grandson’s bar mitzvah.

Over thirty years ago Abe Lieberman’s prayers at shul were interrupted by Connie Gower, seeking to avenge his brother, who Lieberman, then a young cop had killed. Lieberman escaped that situation. Now, a much older Lieberman sits in the Yuma airport, along with a local cop, handcuffed to Gower. He’s bringing him back to Chicago to stand trial for a “hit.” Gower has made a career of killing people for hire.

All hell breaks loose when an elderly airport worker opens fire on Gower, killing him, getting badly wounded by the local policeman in the process. The worker survives but won’t give Lieberman much. He tells him he was paid by a man with a darkened thumb, money that would go to a granddaughter’s college fund. Now, Lieberman returns to Chicago to find the man who ordered the hit.

He faces far more than this on his return. Two ethnic gangs, one Latino and the other Asian, are on the verge of an all-out war. Meanwhile, an obsessed Falun Gong cultist is stalking his partner Hanrahan’s pregnant wife, who is Asian. And Hanrahan is under pressure to quickly find three youth who raped a rising Black detective’s wife. The detective is on the mayor’s shortlist for a top police slot. No one want’s that detective to find those youth first. And while all this is happening, a disillusioned sign painter is plotting to kill a country star who has disappointed him, thinking that for a moment he will be a hero. Just another week in Chicago.

While Lieberman cherishes his family, homelife is a challenge. His wife is zealously guarding his diet because his cholesterol is high. His daughter blames her failed marriages and troubles in life on Abe. Yet she wants his help with her son’s bar mitzvah, including financial help, stretching his detective’s salary further. And his responsibilities at the synagogue keep calling. The only thing that mitigates any of this is the deep fellowship and banter with the alter cockers, the men he prays with, and eats food forbidden by his wife, at the local deli.

This is my first Abe Lieberman (yes I know I’m reading out of order!). My son introduced me to Kaminsky’s Russian detective, Porfiry Rostnikov. I loved those stories and so downloaded this to my Kindle when it came up as a bargain. And what a treat to discover this veteran, street smart and self-deprecating detective. He show compassion for the men of his shul and for his wayward daughter, even while he mentors his grandson as he makes an important life passage. The book is a quick and engaging read that gives one sympathy for the personal and professional challenges facing any policeman in one of our major cities. Abe Lieberman, whatever his faults, navigates these pretty well. I have a feeling this won’t be my last Abe Lieberman story.

Review: A Fine Red Rain

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A Fine Red Rain (Porfiry Rostnikov #4), Stuart M. Kaminsky. New York: Mysterious Press, 2012 (First published in 1987).

Summary: When two of three high wire artist die, one by suicide, one by “accident,” Rostnikov suspects more, little realizing the reach of the KGB into this case while his friends Sasha deals with black marketers and Karpo pursues a serial murderer of prostitutes.

Porfiry Rostnikov, once a hero has been demoted after a clash with the KGB, separated from his team of Sasha Tkach and Emil Karpo. Rostnikov’s son has been sent to Afghanistan, a warning of what can happen to family of those crossing the KGB. Rostnikov is reduced to chasing pickpockets in Arbat Square when he spots a man atop a statue of Gogol, spouting nonsense about flying. Rostnikov fails to talk him down as he ends his life with a perfect somersault onto the pavement. He was an aerial artist for the circus where the other male in the act, Oleg, discovers in the last moment of his life that his safety net is not. Rostnikov, thinking that there is more than a concurrent suicide and accident going on, sets out to investigate, The third, Katya Rashkovskaya, doesn’t want to be protected, even after Rostnikov saves her life. Nor will she tell him anything she knows. Then his old KGB boss, dying of cancer warns him off the case. This is KGB territory. But he suspects the deputy director, Mazaraki is behind the deaths and the murder attempt, and he uses that angle to keep pursuing the case.

Meanwhile, Sasha’s undercover work trapping videotape and machine black marketers reveals corruption on the part of his boss. The boss turns the black marketers to his own profitable end. That is, until Sasha teams up with Rostnikov and the two black marketers to mount a sting.

Emil Karpo has an obsession with unsolved crimes, studying the files, brooding over them. His current file is that of a series of murders of a prostitute. We are introduced to the killer, a file clerk wanting to make the Party safe from prostitutes…and he is feeling the compulsion to kill again.

Rostnikov, despite his leg injury, ends up playing a decisive role in the denouement of all three cases, while Sasha intervenes at a decisive moment to save Rostnikov’s life during the climactic confrontation. Clearly this team belongs together, and Rostnikov manages to find the leverage to make that happen by the end.

Kaminsky moves between the three plots in a fast-paced novel. One sees the currency of knowledge that can be used to subdue, to manipulate, and even to murder. Rostnikov, not ignorant of these things surprises us in his apparent vulnerability, and shrewd intelligence, combined with a loyalty to his friends, each with their own vulnerabilities. We see how difficult it can be to be married to someone in law enforcement, compounded in Rostnikov’s case with the ever present danger of falling afoul of his own superiors. Perhaps the only thing that protects Rostnikov is his own humility, the realization that these things could come at any time, and that he is never above or beyond them.

Review: Rostnikov’s Vacation

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Rostnikov’s Vacation (Porfiry Rostnikov #7), Stuart M. Kaminsky. New York: Mysterious Press/Open Road Media, 2012.

Summary: Rostnikov, on vacation in Yalta, learns that the death of a fellow investigator on vacation was murder, and that top investigators throughout Moscow are being sent on vacation at the time of a major political rally.

Porfiry Rostnikov is on vacation in Yalta. Rather, he was sent on vacation. He accepts it because it is a chance for recuperation of his wife, Sarah, from brain surgery. He meets another investigator, Georgi Vasilievich, has pleasant conversations with him in the evenings, until Vasilievich turns up dead from an apparent heart attack, only it turns out to be murder. The signs show that his killers inflicted painful interrogation first, and searched his room.

Meanwhile, his assistant Emil Karpo is investigating the murder of an East German, until he is also ordered on vacation. He stretches his departure to finish his investigation while the others on the team pursue a band of computer thieves preying on Jewish computer specialists, resulting in Sasha Tkach discovering he is all too human, failing his partner Zelach, who winds up in the hospital. He ends up joining Karpo.

What is it Vasilievich had discovered? What connection did this have with all the top investigators around Moscow being sent on vacation? Who was doing this and why, in a Moscow caught in a power struggle between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin? And why does all this coincide with a major political rally?

You probably have a sense of where this is going. That’s what made this diverting rather than riveting. You want to see how Rostnikov and his team figure out what’s going on. There are predictable instances of things being not as they seem. Perhaps one of the reasons Kaminsky sends Rostnikov on vacation is it offers a chance to develop other characters on the team–Tkach, Karpo, and even Zelach.

This was not the most outstanding in the series. Kaminsky develops Rostnikov’s team, explores the labyrinthine maneuverings of the Kremlin with an engaging enough plot to hold your interest. Sometimes, that’s all a book needs to do.

Review: A Cold Red Sunrise

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a cold red sunrise

A Cold Red Sunrise (Porfiry Rostnikov #5), Stuart M. Kaminsky. New York: Mysterious Press/Open Road Media, 2012.

Summary: After making enemies in the Kremlin, a demoted Porfiry Rostnikov is sent to Siberia to solve the murder of a Russian official, while others are working to undermine Rostnikov, and prevent a solution to the murder.

A Russian commissar had been sent to Tumsk in Siberia to investigate the suspicious circumstances behind the suspicious death of a dissident doctor’s daughter, a dissident soon to leave for the West. On the way to a hearing in the early morning hours, he is killed by a mysterious killer who stabs him through the eye with an icicle.

Porfiry Rostnikov has been demoted after offending enemies in the Kremlin in the pursuit of justice. Working with two younger assistants, Emil Karpo and Sasha Tkach, who have followed him into the backwater of solving low-level crimes, they work to stem the efforts of theft rings and thugs harassing locals. That is, until Rostnikov is assigned to investigate the death of Commissar Rutkin in far off Tumsk in Siberia. Karpo accompanies him, order by the KGB to report back on the case. Another official goes along as well to observe him. Tumsk is where they send exiles and it can be wondered if it will become Rostnikov’s home.

He methodically pursues his work, interviewing and befriending the ex-priest Galich, the exiled general Krasnikov, who is furiously working on a secret manuscript, and Dr. Samsonov and his attractive wife Ludmilla. He and Karpo interview Mrasnikov, the aged caretaker of the People’s Hall. He saw something but fears to speak. For some reason, he is only allowed to investigate the Commissar’s death, even though he suspects that death is connected to the death of Samsonov’s daughter

Rostnikov only has a few days to solve the case, made more urgent by news that his wife is facing a life-threatening condition requiring brain surgery. Between interviews, he works out with weights, and thinks. But what moves things forward is an attempt on his life that results in the serious wounding of the old man Mrasnikov. The killer has been careless. And Rostnikov knows it.

This mystery won an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel in 1989. The layered plot, with what is going on behind the scenes against Rostnikov, and with the KGB, the relations Rostnikov forms with everyone around him from his fellow detectives, and even the potential suspects, and the “presence” of Rostnikov as events come to their culmination all contribute to a great read. Many fictional detectives fight not only crime but the system. Soviet Russia in the 1980’s offers a unique setting, but confronts Rostnikov with the risks of cynicism or bitterness many detectives face. The Rostnikov character is striking as one with a calling to fight crime, a knowledge of the criminal mind, of the possibilities and limits of his situation, and someone utterly secure with himself.

I hope you get to know him.

 

Review: Fall of a Cosmonaut

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fall of a cosmonaut.jpg

Fall of a Cosmonaut (Porfiry Rostnikov #13), Stuart M. Kaminsky. New York: Mysterious Press, 2000.

Summary: Chief Inspector Rostnikov and his team are charged with investigating three cases, a missing cosmonaut, a stolen film, and a brutal murder in a Paranormal Research Institute, only the first of the murders in the course of the story.

My son often manages to find books I probably never would have noticed that end up as fascinating reads. This book was such a case. It is actually the thirteenth installment in Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series and the real find here is the character of Rostnikov who combines the savvy political instincts necessary to survive in a cutthroat Russian bureacracy with an intuition about human behavior that leads him to surround himself with shrewd associates, and solve crimes.

In this installment, there is not one, but three cases that his boss, the Yak, has assigned him, expecting results. One is a cosmonaut that has disappeared, along with secret knowledge of events on the Mir space station, knowledge that others have already died without revealing, the most recent by a swift injection from an umbrella-bearing man that is following Rostnikov and his son Iosef, as they travel to the village where Tsimion Vladovka grew up.

In the second case, a movie director, Yuri Kriskov has just completed what is adverted to be a great epic on the life of Leo Tolstoy. Then he receives word that the movie and its negatives have been stolen, and are being held for a ransom that if not paid will result both in the destruction of the movie and the death of Kriskov. It turns out that this is a plot of an assistant, Valery Grachev who is in love with Vera, Kriskov’s wife, and Vera, who wants to be rid of Yuri. Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva are assigned to this case, trying to find the manic genius who has stolen the film, and is seeking a way to kill Yuri.

The third case involves the gruesome death by claw hammer of a sleep and dream researcher at a Paranormal Studies Institute. Emil Karpo and his understudy Zelech are assigned this one. Zelech is sidetracked by a woman researcher who suspects him of special abilities. Karpo collects shoes, finds a suspect who is a reclusive researcher who claims he is framed, and homes in on a jealous fellow scientist good at covering tracks.

Rostnikov has the skill to adeptly counsel each both on the cases and their personal lives. Karpo needs a personal life. Tkach is estranged from his wife. Elena and his son Iosef are engaged. Zelech is single. They eventually unravel each case, but not before others die and their own lives in several instances are endangered. The cases also provide “information”  that “the Yak” can use to advance his own ambitions, and his ability to control and manipulate others.

I mention all the figures associated with the cases because, like any good Russian novel, keeping track of the names and who is doing what is more than half the battle! The narrative keeps moving back and forth between the cases briskly enough that we don’t lose the thread of any of them as we move to the climax and resolution of each.

Altogether, there are sixteen numbers in Kaminsky’s Rostnikov series. I don’t know if I’ll get around to reading all of them, but I did pick up another one as a result of reading this. I think one of the most intriguing thing about mysteries is the distinctive character of the detectives–Holmes, Poirot, J. B. Fletcher, Kay Scarpetta, Robicheaux, Maigret, and Rostnikov–each seems a world different from the others and the delight is as much in the depths of these characters as in the resolution of these cases. I think I’m going to have to modify the bibliophile’s complaint and say, “So many series and so little time!”