Customer Reviews

Dispatch from a Cold Country

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is another exciting book from Mr. Cullen. He really has a distinctive way a describing the dark beauty of Russia and getting into the heads the Russian every man. The story has a great story line and he peppers the book with interesting sub plots that keep you interested. With that said I did think the love story sub plot could have been left out. I am convinced that long ago some book publishing executive wrote a set of rules which dictated that all action thrillers need some kind of sub plot love story. Then one just seemed to me to be thrown in by the author to placate someone other then the author thinking it was an intricate part of the story. Overall a good book, if you have liked his other work then you will enjoy this one.

Cullen writes an engrossing thriller that does full justice to the beauty and color of St. Petersburg, and he knows the Hermitage well. I was a Fulbright professor in St. Petersburg in 1998 (back again in summer 1999) and I was in and out of the offices and galleries he mentions, and so have a special appreciation for how well he captured the look, feel, and temperament of that great museum.

There is, however, a stark error in the Kirkus plot summary of this book: The subject painting in the novel is NOT the Madonna Litta at all, but instead is a (fictional) painting by Leonardo da Vinci of Leda.

This is the third in the Colin Burke Trilogy (see my first two reviews) about an American, Russian-speaking journalist in Russia. Author Cullen draws upon his actual experience as an American journalist in Russia, and paints a vivid picture (pardon the pun) of life in Russia, the society and the still-extant police repression in the still-paranoid Russian Governmental bureaucrats, who feel that total control over everyone in the society is mandatory. The story descriptions are an educational lesson about post communism Russia, the people and the overpowering bureaucracy. Cullen seems to say that nothing much has changed, only the names have changed to protect the guilty and perhaps, delude the West into believing that Russia is now a free democracy. Knowing Russia, would the nomenklatura willingly give up their power? Hardly.