Volk's Game [Paperback]

With the notable exception of Frederick Forsyth, whose books The Odessa File and The Day of the Jackal are masterpieces of the genre, I rarely read thrillers. However, the present-day Russian setting of this debut intrigued me just enough to pick it up when I needed a change of pace in my reading. Although the post-Soviet "new Russia" is more than ten years old now, it's maintained a "wild west" reputation that makes it a fertile setting for outsized action and characters like those found in this debut.

Volk (meaning "wolf" in Russian) is Alexei Volkovoy, once an orphaned child growing up in Cold War-era Russia, then a special forces sniper for the Russian Army in Chechnya, now a shady underworld figure in Moscow. His game is all manner of vice (except child prostitution, he's got a strict age limit of 14...) as well as some high-level art thievery on behalf of a shadowy master named "The General." It is the latter element which propels the plot, as Volk is directed to procure a long-lost Da Vinci painting from the catacombs of the Hermitage where it has lain hidden alongside other booty from the Red Army's march to Berlin half a century earlier. If this sounds fairly straightforward, it's quickly complicated by Maxim, a ruthless Azeri mafioso who dominates Moscow's organized crime. Maxim also wants the painting, and seems to have and eyes and ears everywhere.

Of course there are tons of twists, turns, and betrayals of all kinds, along with plenty of fisticuffs, gunplay, and other violence. The latter elements are worth noting, as the book gets pretty gruesome in several torture scenes and flashbacks to scenes from Volk's years in Chechnya (where he lost a leg). I'm not a particularly squeamish reader, but some of the interrogation scenes were unpleasantly vivid. It's also worth noting that readers had better like antiheroes, because Volk gets his hands quite dirty while on the giving end of some of the torture. Furthermore, the book is keen to highlight the unsavory elements of post-Soviet Russia, such as starving pensioners and Army vets living in tiny, squalid apartments, and the wholesale literal prostitution of its population for Western consumption. One almost expects a donation form at the back of the book for some kind of Russian charity.

Volk is a bit too much of a Hollywood-style killing machine, whose grim determination becomes mechanical over time. His soft spot for kids and widows an ex-soldiers is supposed to temper this somewhat, but it comes across more cliched than anything else. He is also humanized somewhat by the presence of his lithe, sexy, and deadly teen girlfriend/partner Valya. They met in Chechnya under somewhat hazy circumstances and have clung to each other ever since. She's also a bit of a standard type, as are just about all of the characters. This is less of a flaw among the supporting cast, as the reader is not asked to invest as much in them. But then again, one doesn't read a book like this for the characters, one reads it for the plot twists, action, and vivid locales (here Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and New York) -- and it delivers all of these with gusto. The book ends with the hint of further adventures to come, although I'm not sure I really care to spend another 300 pages with such a nasty protagonist. But for those who like their thrillers bursting with color and blood, this is just the ticket.

I'd never heard of the author, Brent Ghelfi, when I spotted this book recently in my local Borders on what was sadly its last day of trading. Even at 90% off, I wouldn't have bought it based on my initial impression from the cover. But then I spotted the recommendation from Lee (Jack Reacher) Child at the bottom of the front cover - "Hard, fast and a truly excellent debut. Highly recommended." - and thought I'd give it a go. I've just finished reading it and can tell you that Lee Child was dead right!

Yes, as some other customers have noted, the tale is somewhat grim - but it's written against a grim background. The picture painted is, were I to put some effort into it, how I would imagine the underbelly of modern Russia really could be.

Without going into any more detail, let me just say that I've added Brent Ghelfi to the short list of authors whose new works I'll buy without hesitation when I see them. I'm definitely looking forward to getting "Volk's Shadow" in paperback (it seems to be currently unavailable).

As much as reviewers would like to think Volk is a good guy, he isn't. Or at least he wasn't when he was the protagonist of Volk's Game. He was a Russian mafioso who ran a small/medium-sized racketeering enterprise for both Moscow's mafia kingpin & a military secret society, serving the latter primarily as an earner (& not an undercover agent as some think). His repertoire makes Goodfellas look like good citizens. You need not read more than a couple of chapters to see this. I won't come to his defence. However, I'll raise two points.

(1) He fits the world of Volk's Game. He is a thief among theives (a la Richard Stark's Parker). In the sequals, he's transformed into, first, an assassin with a pseudo-conscience, &, then, into a Russian James Bond with pseudo-morals (killing bad guys by missiles fired from drones).

(2) In Volk's Game, his saving grace, for the lack of a better term, is his self-sacrifice for the woman he loves, whom he risks his life for despite knowing she may love another (a woman no less).

In the sequals, he's no more interesting than a self-righteous psychopath. I'm not against psychopaths per se. I enjoy Patricia Highsmith's Ripley. But Ripley was never self-righteous. In Volk's Game, we're observing the machinations of a professional bad guy. In the sequals, we're fed self-justifying internal monologues one after another. In the forth book, we're put in the POV of a character (not Volk) psyching himself up for torture, with an internal monologue on why torture is moral. I stopped reading at this point & will not read a fifth book if there is one. The Russian underworld, an exotic wonderland, I want to view from behind the looking-glass. So-called good guys indulging in moral pronouncements while killing & torturing I don't want to read about.