The idea that a combination of a reformist president, a simmering economic crisis and separatist tendencies in the republics might bring an end to the Soviet Union seemed like science fiction. Now it reads like prescience. Which is just one small reason for reading James' latest book Monstrum. A better reason is that James has turned out the thriller of the year: a gripping, brooding, gory, and, for Moscow insiders, amusing tale set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow in the year 2015 that combines elements of Gorky Park, Fatherland and Silence of the Lambs.
The apocalypse is not nuclear. The Yeltsin era, viewed retrospectively as a time of unfettered greed and uncontrolled liberalism, has ended in a bloody civil war. The victors are the Nationalists, their routed enemies (James admits to thinking hard about how to name them before delving into Russian history for a solution) the Anarchists: white flag vs. black.
But the peace is stalked by horror. Amid the ruins of the artillery-raked Krasnopresnensky district, a serial killer is lurking, a Russian Jack-the- Ripper given to disembowelling teenage girls with surgical precision. Assigned to the case is Konstantin Vadim, a policeman plucked from provincial Murmansk.
The real reason for Vadim's move to Moscow, however, is that -- with a little help from plastic surgery and makeup -- he is to stand in as a double for the Nationalist strongman and hero of the hour, Leonid Koba (another historical name).
With a delicious sense of post-Soviet irony, James has the new government christen its secret police force the okhrana, as in the tsar's day, but has everyone refer to it as the cheka. Other good jokes include a victim whose underwear was bought from the Moscow branch of Marks and Spencer, a Rasputin-like lay monk who holds orgies in the underground civil defense shelters, and, best of all. the Krasnopresnenskaya police department's pet cat: an animal with a taste for fish burgers known as Lenin, because of its habit of solemnly raising its right paw to greet the workers.
To complicate the plot further, Vadim is seduced by a glamorous American woman sent in as an observer of the amnesty program, while his ex-wife is an Anarchist general on the run who refuses to surrender.
The search for the killer takes Vadim on a dark odyssey from the waiting-rooms of power to Belorusskaya Station, where a sinister secret lurks among the shunting yards, populated by down-and-out orphan junkies.
Hollywood ruined a dazzling plot in the dismal filming of Robert Harrison's Fatherland. Roman Polansky is currently reading "Monstrum", and let's hope that a better film is made of James' bleak but enthralling vision of future Moscow. Watch out for location camera crews in Moscow any day now.
"Monstrum" by Donald James is published by Century, 408 pages, 9.99 pounds ($17.00).
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