The Red Coffin [Paperback]

I'd heard good things about Eye of the Red Tsar which is the first book in this series so I was really pleased to hear I'd won a review copy of The Red Coffin (published in the US as Shadow Pass). My only concern was whether I would find this book too gritty for my tastes as it's set in Stalinist Russia in 1939. The blurb on the back of the book when it arrived also sounded exciting - it talks about the world standing on the brink of Armageddon, years of revolution, fear and persecution, and the grim realities of Stalin's Soviet Union. I was expecting to read a gritty, realistic historical thriller. That's not what this book is.

I am by no means an expert of any kind on Russian history but I thought this book required too great a suspension of disbelief for my tastes. Pekkala used to be the trusted advisor of Tsar Nicholas II and you get to see their relationship through the many flashbacks Pekkala experiences throughout the book. After the Revolution, Pekkala was imprisoned before being released by Stalin on the condition that he worked for Stalin as his top and most trusted investigator. The Stalin depicted in this novel seems to bear no relation to the man who sent millions to penal labour camps. Although Pekkala often talks about how risky his position his, whenever we see him with Stalin, Stalin comes across as having all the menace and authority of a rather cuddly bear.

Commissar Kirov, Pekkala's assistant, is a perfectly nice chap but has been given a bumbling, humorous role to play similar to Inspector Morse's sidekick Lewis and again, given the setting of this book, I felt this just didn't work. Could anyone actually survive in that time period with that much innocence?

And that, for me, was the problem I had with the whole book: everything about it felt wrong given the historical setting. Putting aside the points above, it wasn't a bad read, but it felt surprisingly bland and isn't a book I would recommend to anyone.

I received an early review copy of this book from LibraryThing, so was fortunate enough to read it before the official releas date.

This novel is a continuation of the Inspector Pekkala series which was introduced to us via The Eye of the Red Tsar. As with it's prequel, the book is split up into alternating chapters of the main characters past recollections and present day circumstances.

I felt that this book helped to explain a lot more of the characters history and his relationship with the Tsar family (a contributing factor to how he percieves his modern day world and the morals he upholds)

Ten or so years has passed since we last met Pekkala and he is now working for Stalin in the same capacity as his previous role to the Tsar. Stalin feels that there has been a security leak on the major project that will help Russia stand against Germany when the inevitable war comes to the borders. Pekkala is sent to investigate the man in charge and bring him in for questioning. Believing he is innocent , Pekkala allows him to return to his military site. Unfortunately he then turns up dead, apparently an accident.... but the investigation takes a more sinister turn when a bullet is found lodged in the corpse.

What follows is a pageturning, plot twisting stormer of a novel that I found hard to put down. This entailed boobytraps, assassins and the cold reality of Stalins regime.

What I most love about the series is the way that humour is mixed with despair no matter what the situation, whether we are being informed of the Gualag deaths or the torture of some poor sould by the secret service.

It helps to have read the first in the series before this one, but not strictly neccessary as all important parts are reiterated (if anything it will spoil the first book as the ending it given away as part of this plot)

All in all a really enjoyable book, and I am told to expect a 3rd in the series.... one I will definately look out for!!!

"The Red Coffin;" in the second crime novel in the new Inspector Pekkala series by Sam Eastland, we again find the detective, of Finnish origin, solving the most secret, important crimes in Russia, or the Soviet Union, as the case may be. In the excellent first novel in the series, Eye of the Red Tsar (Inspector Pekkala) (Inspector Pekkala), we found Pekkala, called back from a Siberian exile that might have killed many a lesser man, and did, and continued to do so, perhaps still does today. As it happens, it's not necessary to read EYE first, but readers may find the background given there to be helpful, and EYE is a very good book on its own merits.

In that first case, Pekkala had been called back by the highest authority in the Soviet, none other than the bloodthirsty tyrant Josef Stalin, to work on a case with the heaviest international implications: a case involving Russia's former ruling family, the royal Romanovs, the one-time, most recent, Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, for whom Pekkala used to work as top investigator, without portfolio, and with nearly unlimited powers. After his Siberian exile imposed when the Communists came into power, Comrade Stalin gave him back that same position, with the required internal passport, called a shadow pass that enabled the investigator to go anywhere, do almost anything, when on a case. But, of course, the detective cannot but be haunted by his, and the Soviet's past.

In this second case, Uncle Joe has continued to allow Pekkala his shadow pass. The dictator has called upon the Inspector to solve a murder mystery, the international implications of which are, if anything, even heavier than in the first case. For World War II is on the horizon, and we are dealing with the development of sophisticated armament that could have a significant influence on the war to come. (Of course, the paranoid Stalin prepared for that war by purging almost the entire officer corps of his military; and as much of Poland's officer corps as he could get his hands on--remember the massacre at Katyn woods? But that's another story.)

The official name of the weapon under development was T-34, and this 30-ton new behemoth was being developed in utter secrecy in the Russian countryside, with an unlimited budget. It was a monster tank, called the Red Coffin by those working upon it. Its inventor, Colonel Rolan Nagorski, is a rogue military genius whose macabre death -- his body is found under one of the prototypes-- is considered an accident only by the innocent.

Stalin, to be sure, is not an innocent. He suspects spies and assassins everywhere - and to be fair, I imagine there were quite a few around. So he brings in his best--if least obsequious --detective to solve a murder that may be considered treason. Pekkala has the dictator's permission to go anywhere, commandeer anything, and interrogate anyone: he is ultimately answerable only to Stalin. But in Soviet Russia that can be quite risky. And just why, Pekkala wonders, is the state's most dreaded female operative, NKVD Commissar Major Lysenkova, investigating the case when she's supposedly only assigned to internal affairs?

Once again, Eastland has evidently done a lot of research, and in fact, the novel reads as if some of it was done by boots on the ground. The writer certainly can put Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Russian countryside and weather, and the Russo-Polish border, as they might have been in that fraught between-the-wars period, on the page in an engrossing, evocative way. The red-hot premise of this novel, like that of its predecessor, is outstandingly imaginative and original. The writer's examination of Soviet society and politics rings true. His writing, narrative, descriptive, and dialog are nicely done. The plot is tight, taut, and attention-grabbing: he's given us another page turner. I liked THE RED COFFIN a lot, but did have some trouble suspending my disbelief, knowing that, in the real world, Stalin was a leader who purged nearly his entire military officer corps as an enormous war approached. But it's in my background to know things like that: readers less haunted by Soviet history may be less bothered by inconvenient facts. And perhaps the Stalin regime really was trying to develop a super tank.