Customer Reviews

Neat Vodka

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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In VODKA NEAT, Faith Zanetti is a 35-year-old English journalist, a foreign correspondent. Her current assignment is to Russia simply because she lived there 16 years ago when it was the Soviet Union so knows the language. She finds as soon as she arrives the second time that she is suspected of a gruesome double murder that occurred the first time.

So Zanetti now needs to find the Russian husband she married all those years ago, when she was 19, and then left behind when she returned to London. He was with her when they discovered the bloody bodies.

This novel certainly is a mystery/thriller as Zanetti, drinking a lot and talking tough throughout, unravels this mystery: what really occurred in the Soviet Union, and what is occurring in Russia? But VODKA NEAT is excellent because the mystery/thrills include descriptions of the Soviet Union as it was and Russia as it is and her life as an innocent 19-year-old in one and as a tough 35-year-old in the other. Zanetti's comments are sarcastic and witty.

For example, at one point, Zanetti is talking about McDonalds when she was in the Soviet Union. "My friend Adrian always used to steal the napkins, straws, toilet light bulbs, and loo roll. So did everyone in Moscow, so in the end they locked the light bulbs into immovable globes and stopped providing everything else."

Another example: "These days a lot of Moscow looks quite beautiful, if a bit inhospitable and imposing. Mayor Luzhkov cleaned it up for a big anniversary, but he didn't clean up any of the bits where foreigh dignitaries weren't going to see. These are the bits where everyone lives."

Obviously, the author, Anna Blundy, has been here herself. As a matter of fact, she lived and worked in Russia as a journalist. So when she shows us the Soviet Union and Russia, we really do see them the way a Western journalist would find them. She's sarcastic and witty. And her Faith Zanetti is authentic.

This gripping murder story is set in post-Soviet Russia and captures that strange, frightening but exhilarating place brilliantly.

The characters fascinate and the plot is wonderfully unpredictable.

The heroine, Faith Zannetti, is more of an anti-heroine but one can't but love her all the same - I just hope she is not about to retire but will return soon.

And you'll love the duck shooting from a tank (military tank, that is)scene - entirely realistic, I can assure you.

What I liked most about this book was the fact that the hero was British and that the setting was in modern-day Russia. I enjoyed experiencing the world and the story from these two different perspectives. But I found the hero not that interesting and not that sympathetic, and the story as a whole felt as if it needed tightening. I wouldn't mind reading more from this author if I felt her more recent novels were tighter.

...then you will love this book. It's so much fun, from its hardboiled heroine to its grotesque send up of Russia c. 1989/1997. Blundy's eye, not just for the details of time, place and culture, but for a foreigner's love-hate relationship with an adopted landscape, is really wonderful.

Fast paced, mesmerizing and featuring soul weary, boozy foreign correspondents, "Vodka Neat" was an enjoyable and exhilarating read from beginning to end.

Posted to Moscow by the Chronicle, foreign correspondent, Faith Zanetti, has mixed feelings about coming back to live and work in Russia. The last thing she expected however was to be arrested on suspicion of murder almost as soon as she'd landed. About sixteen years ago, a young couple was found brutally murdered in their apartment. Faith, who was nineteen at that time, was married to a Russian black marketer, Dimitri Sakhnova, and living and working illegally in Moscow. Then, Demitri managed to keep her out of the investigation. Now, however, the police claim that Demitri has confessed to the crime and has implicated her in the crime as well. Faith is flabbergasted; admittedly she was blindingly drunk on that fateful night, but surely she would remember killing two people with an axe? Fortunately, the police have practically no evidence implicating her and let her go. But now Faith is on a mission: to clear her name and find out what exactly Demitri is up to. Little does she know that she's about to step into a web of deceit and murderous jealously...

Fast paced and completely compelling, I finished "Vodka Neat" in one sitting. It was the kind of exciting and enjoyable new read that one is always relieved and thankful to find. I really enjoyed the author's tongue-in-cheek prose style and the manner in which she structured the novel, going backwards and forwards in time, showing us Moscow in the 1990s and Moscow today. Also her character portrayals were vivid and totally believable. All in all this was a first rate read. Light and almost breezy manner in spite of it's subject matter, and featuring a female protagonist that is both charming and capable and full of wonderfully intriguing plot twists, I'd recommend "Vodka Neat" to any mystery reader looking for something a little different to savour.

Sixteen years ago as a nineteen years old newlywed Russian Faith Zanetti emigrated from her home country to England to start over after the horrific scandal that destroyed her marriage though she has come home for short visits since she left town. She obtained work as a war correspondent for the London based Chronicle, but now her life has gone full circle. Her foreign editor Tamsin assigns the vodka guzzling cigarette smoker to be their new Moscow correspondent.

However, she is stunned upon her arrival to learn her former spouse Dimitri Sakhnov who confessed to a murder in 1989 insists he never killed anyone; he said he took the blame for his then wife Faith; she is the killer. Faith visits Dimitri at the psycho ward only he is not there. Instead American Adrian Smith is being held. Adrian tells her Dimitri is dead and soon afterward so is he. Faith believes Dimitri lives and orchestrates events; with help of her boyfriend she plans to find and confront the rogue she was once married to.

Faith is a great protagonist who holds together this strong Russian investigative thriller as her personal issues are as powerful as her need to bring Dimitri to justice, preferably without the Moscow police involved. The story line is fast-paced, but driven by Faith and the support characters especially the Muscovites as readers will be hooked by her seemingly solo (with her American boyfriend) belief that her ex is alive.

Harriet Klausner

About midway in this novel (page 111 to be exact), Faith Zanetti, the protagonist, describes herself as follows: "But here I was, raddled and war-weary with nobody to love and nobody to love me...I felt empty and weary." That is the feeling one gets from reading this far. Fortunately, from that point on, the story develops and the book becomes more interesting.

Faith is a foul-mouthed 35-year-old war correspondent on whom experiences have taken a toll. At age 19 she married a rather mysterious man in Moscow and a year later left him for England, a couple of days after a couple is murdered in an adjoining room to their own bedroom.. Now 15 years later she is assigned to her newspaper's Moscow bureau. No sooner does she land, than the police haul her in for questioning about the old crime.

The reason the police are looking at her is the revelation that her husband, who is in a psychiatric prison after having confessed to the murder, has now recanted and accused Faith. When she goes to the prison, she discovers not her husband but an old friend and co-worker. Thus, Faith sets about to learn about the circumstances of the murder, of which she's become a suspect

There are a lot of unnecessary four-letter words strewn throughout the novel, perhaps in an attempt to portray the hard-boiled nature of the characters. But to one way of thinking, such language is unnecessary to such a great extent. There are some interesting descriptions of Moscow and life under the former Communist regime. Some advice: Skip the first 100 pages, and the novel assumes form. The background could have been summarized more briefly without detracting from the main mystery.