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A work worth reading in the present age of Putin
Book Review
By Derryll White
Kaminsky, Stuart (1984). Black Knight in Red Square.
Stuart Kaminsky is very thorough in his inspection and travels by Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov through Moscow. All of his Moscow police characters are quirky, well-adapted it would seem to surviving and achieving in a system more foreboding than ours. The presence of the KGB in this 1984 novel reflects directly on the status of Vladimir Putin in 2023.
Kaminsky keeps things sparse and tight in this novel. The language is direct, authoritative and very descriptive of Russia in the 1980s, after the Cuban missile crisis and shortly before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Kaminsky transports the reader into Red Square, and into the tensions and ominous control of the Russian secret police, the KGB.
Like Raymond Chandler his language is sparse, street-wise and loaded with fire in all his character interactions. Each act leads on, clearly, to an inevitable but shrouded conclusion.
Kaminsky’s Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries are definitely worth reading in the present age of Putin.
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KGB – …Porfiry Rostnikov was entering the huge pale yellow building at 22 Lubyanka Street. The KGB headquarters stands opposite the 36-foot statue of “Iron” Felix Dzerzhinsky, who organized the Cheka for Lenin. The Cheka went through many transformations and is now the KGB, “the sword of the revolution.” There are white curtains at the windows and shiny brass fittings on the door. Beyond the general offices and interrogation rooms are, as everyone knows, the cells.
TERRORISTS – It confirmed his limited knowledge of small terrorist groups. Drama was very important to them. If you simply hit a victim with a bat and walk away, you generate little publicity. If you inject diseases, take hostages in public landmarks, hijack airplanes, bomb babies, the world looks at you with fear or disgust or awe. The important thing is that the world looks at you.
EQUALITY – She was well aware that the Russians claimed to have achieved equality of the sexes, but she was equally aware that it was a hollow claim, the women were rarely given anything but token positions of importance, that, in fact, women were expected to work at full-time jobs and to be responsible for homemaking as well, while men complained and continued to run things, just as they had done in the past. It was the same everywhere. What she had, she had taken by her own intellect and strength.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
