BOOK REVIEW: LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
Ronnie H. Terpening
Library Journal Reviews
School Library Journal Reviews
May 15, 2006
Steinhauer, Olen Liberation Movements Minotaur: St. Martin’s Aug.
2006. c.304p. ISBN 0-312-33204-1 [ISBN 978-0-312-33204-4 ]. $24.95. M
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 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
en 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. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 4/1/06.]- Ronnie H.
Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Publishers Weekly Reviews May 15, 2006
Liberation Movements
Liberation Movements Olen Steinhauer. St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95
(304p) ISBN 0-312-33204-1
Steinhauer’s dazzling fourth book in his series about various police
and intelligence agents in an unnamed Communist-era Eastern European
country gives a large role to Brano Sev, the seriously conflicted
spy who starred in the previous entry, 36 Yalta Boulevard (2005). Sev
sums up the new book’s theme when he says to a younger subordinate,
“Intelligence work is precisely what it says-it’s about intelligence.
We are not murderers.” There’s some irony here: we know that Sev has
killed several people himself. But there’s also an unexpected note of
humanity, as Sev supervises the investigation by two junior agents
of a murder in Russian-occupied Prague in 1968 that’s later tied to
a plane hijacked by Armenian terrorists on its way to Istanbul in 1975.
Another new element is the Turkish capital, alive and yeasty compared
to the drab, restricted home city of 36 Yalta Boulevard . And the
emergence of a major female character-a homicide investigator looking
for personal justice-shows how a skilled writer working at the top
of his form can keep a series from faltering.