by Andrey Kurkov
- By Andrey Kurlov
Reading this book is a similar experience to walking/running on a treadmill. You can feel your legs move, the track move but you know you’re not going anywhere. Except that you’re on the “road” to a fitter life. Similarly, you can see the pages you’re turning, you’re reading the lines, you’re laughing at parts, biting your lips in places, keeping your fingers crossed for the good guys and yet you don’t feel like it’s going anywhere. However, the anticipation that you are going to get somewhere makes it all worthwhile.
Andrey Kurkov has done it again and this time with the General’s Thumb…. Lieutenant Viktor Slutsky is appointed to the case when a General and Presidential Adviser’s body turns up hanging from an advertising balloon. Meanwhile, KGB Officer Nik Tsensky is assigned to a secret mission in Kiev. Whilst both are on different assignments, an overlap between the cases results in one pursuing the other; thereby both become involved in a battle between the Russian and Ukrainian secret services.
Kurkov creates a gripping and non-stop world involving, a hit-man with a drink and drugs problem as well as the ability to communicate in sign language. Watch out for a hearse, a tortoise called ‘Nina’, a back firing automatic pistol and an intimidation technique involving throwing kilos of fish over a fence.
This is a great read and I would recommend it highly, in spite of the fact that the ending didn’t quite live up to its action-packed promise as I had hoped and expected.