14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Defending the Iron Curtain, January 16, 2010
This review is from: 36 Yalta Boulevard (Paperback)
Growing up in California at the height of the Cold War, my heroes of espionage fiction were almost invariably British or American spies, and mostly the former since the Queen's agents seemed to play the game with more panache. My personal favorite was Quiller. (It's no accident that the most famous Western secret agent is 007 of Her Majesty's Secret Service.) Only Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series whisked me away behind the Iron Curtain. Thus, it's unusual - or perhaps not now that the U.S.S.R. is dissolved - that an Eastern agent operating in the Cold War era against "our side" should emerge as a literary protagonist.
While living in Romania, American author Olen Steinhauer got the idea to write a series of crime/spy novels set in the Soviet Bloc countries of old. Here in 36 YALTA BOULEVARD, the protagonist is Brano Sev, an officer and sometimes assassin working for a generic Ministry for State Security headquartered (on Yalta Blvd.) in the Capital of a generic Eastern European satellite of Russia. We know that Sev was born in a small town north of the Tatra Mountains, which fact likely makes him Polish, but it's perhaps not Poland that he works for. Czechoslovakia might be the closest fit, or Romania; it's left vague. But, no matter.
In the majority of Cold War spy novels that I've read, the hero's basic mission is known beforehand: extract a defector, steal a secret, or disrupt a nefarious KGB plot. Only rarely have I been thrown into an unlighted maze with the secret agent to stumble our way through the darkness to the end. The best plot I've ever read and watched was just so. (I'm thinking of John le Carré's superlative conclusion to the Smiley series, the book
Smiley's People and the BBC's TV miniseries adaptation,
Smiley's People.)
In 36 YALTA BOULEVARD, Sev, after being framed for murder while on assignment in Vienna and subsequently tossed from the Ministry and relegated to a factory job, is given a second chance by his former boss Colonel Cerny. Brano is to return to his hometown of Bóbrka to scrutinize a petroleum engineer who seems to have made suspicious contact with the malicious Americans while on a recent visit to the West. Soon after returning home, Sev is once again set up to take a murder rap and must run. Who's out to get him, and why? Into the maze he goes, and we tag along.
From a narrative standpoint, one of the most intriguing characters of this thriller, besides Sev himself, is the object of his middle-age love interest, the mysterious Yugoslav Dijana Frankoviæ. What makes her an especially clever creation is the fractured English which she speaks. I've never known an author to go to so much trouble to differentiate a character by such means and to such an extent, and I admire the cleverness of it. Dijana to Sev:
"I am not blind. I can to see your faults. And the future ... what knows? Maybe we can to be together only one week, maybe five years. Maybe we cannot to live together. I don't know. All what I know is this, Brano Sev. When I am with you, it feels like correct. And when you is not here, I want you to be with me."
36 YALTA BOULEVARD is a thinking man's spy escapade with a couple of totally unsuspected plot twists at the end. I liked it very much for the plot's construct and location. It's an engrossing read.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lifting the Iron Curtain, August 11, 2010
This review is from: 36 Yalta Boulevard (Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed Olen Steinhauer's first two novels, The Bridge of Sighs and The Confession, set in a never revealed post--World War II Eastern European country. The five book series takes place over five decades starting in the 1940's so this third entry is set in the 1960's. The author's previous two works were more murder mysteries while 36 Yalta Boulevard strays into Alan Furst espionage territory. The chief character, Brano Sev, is just not as engaging as Emil Brod or Ferenc Kolyeszar. Also the plot is very convoluted and does not really pay off in its resolution. Still I remain a fan of the series overall and look forward to the final installments.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nikita Krushchev meets Phillip Marlowe, October 2, 2007
This review is from: 36 Yalta Boulevard (Paperback)
The most intriguing thing about this story is that Brano Sev, the Eastern European secret policeman protagonist, actually believes in socialism. Not in the frothing-at-the-mouth, man-the-barricades way, but through a quieter sense of hope. Despite being beaten to a pulp every time he falls into the hands of the country he is serving (the unthinking brutality just gets comical by the end) and numerous chances to escape to another life, Brano goes back to his country and his job in the end.
It's a tribute to Steinhauer's writing, that we can still see Brano's humanity and admire his intelligence despite his being so wrong about the big picture. At the end, Brano admits that the sysytem of which he is a member is corrupt, but it's the corruption he knows. It's a type of national love really, which infects all of his countrymen, especially the exiles who have left it.
The story involves many characters, subplots, and settings. The first two-thirds slowly lay the groundwork, and the last part brings all the threads together in ways you wouldn't have expected. It's a good Marlowian thriller but the story really is about Brano, a man who's both complex and simple.
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