Customer Reviews

Volk's Game: A Novel

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First Sentence: "What do you know about art, Volk?"

Alexei Volkovoy, "Volk," must balance between to masters; Maxim, a Russia mafia kingpin, and The General, to whom Volk is indebted. They command Volk to steal a painting newly found behind another in the basement of the Hermitage. But the theft quickly goes bad. Men are killed, Volk's lover kidnapped and being tortured. Still Volk must retrieve the painting before they kill his lover.

Ghelfi draws a picture of Russia and Red Square that has changed my way of looking at those areas. Alexei Volkovoy, "Volk," is an interesting protagonist. Ghelfi has also done an excellent job in creating Volk, making him a fully-developed character in spite of brutal nature of the story. Volk may not have many scruples, but he does have them. Volk, and his ladyfriend, Valya, are what life, war and survival have made them. The story is unrelentingly dark and does include torture of women but the characters are not nice, law-abiding people. This is not a pleasant book, but it is a good one and I'm not sorry to have read it.

This is a fast and thrilling tale of drugs, sex, murder and mayhem. If you like action with intelligence thrown in, then this is for you. Volk is not only tough, he's also smart and a little sadisitic as well, just what this book calls for. Can't wait for his next rampage!

This is a cool thriller -- an action-packed story in an exotic setting with compelling characters. But it is way more than that too. The writing is so good it almost transcends the genre. The author's insights about good and evil in this contradictory "post-postmodern" world are powerful and thought provoking. This novel is almost literary in its ambition to reveal what it means to be human, even in a place and time where just about everything and everyone works to strip humanity away.

And Ghelfi's way with language is hypnotic. Corruption of the soul and human degradation has rarely been so evocatively, even lyrically described. So when reading Volk's Game, you find yourself in the middle of a fast moving page turner, anxious to find out what happens next, but at the same time you want to slow down and linger with each vivid paragraph. It's like stopping for a quick bite at a dingy eatery in the concourse of a faraway airport and discovering a four-star quality meal. To extend the analogy, this novel is a juicy, blood red filet mignon, a carafe of hearty Bordeaux, and a dark (very dark) chocolate soufflé dripping with gooey raspberry sauce. It is so richly rewarding you don't mind taking your time. You can always catch a later flight -- rarely do you get to savor an edifying guilty pleasure like this.

With the notable exception of Frederick Forsyth, whose books The Odessa File and The Day of the Jackal are masterpieces of the genre, I rarely read thrillers. However, the present-day Russian setting of this debut intrigued me just enough to pick it up when I needed a change of pace in my reading. Although the post-Soviet "new Russia" is more than ten years old now, it's maintained a "wild west" reputation that makes it a fertile setting for outsized action and characters like those found in this debut.

Volk (meaning "wolf" in Russian) is Alexei Volkovoy, once an orphaned child growing up in Cold War-era Russia, then a special forces sniper for the Russian Army in Chechnya, now a shady underworld figure in Moscow. His game is all manner of vice (except child prostitution, he's got a strict age limit of 14...) as well as some high-level art thievery on behalf of a shadowy master named "The General." It is the latter element which propels the plot, as Volk is directed to procure a long-lost Da Vinci painting from the catacombs of the Hermitage where it has lain hidden alongside other booty from the Red Army's march to Berlin half a century earlier. If this sounds fairly straightforward, it's quickly complicated by Maxim, a ruthless Azeri mafioso who dominates Moscow's organized crime. Maxim also wants the painting, and seems to have and eyes and ears everywhere.

Of course there are tons of twists, turns, and betrayals of all kinds, along with plenty of fisticuffs, gunplay, and other violence. The latter elements are worth noting, as the book gets pretty gruesome in several torture scenes and flashbacks to scenes from Volk's years in Chechnya (where he lost a leg). I'm not a particularly squeamish reader, but some of the interrogation scenes were unpleasantly vivid. It's also worth noting that readers had better like antiheroes, because Volk gets his hands quite dirty while on the giving end of some of the torture. Furthermore, the book is keen to highlight the unsavory elements of post-Soviet Russia, such as starving pensioners and Army vets living in tiny, squalid apartments, and the wholesale literal prostitution of its population for Western consumption. One almost expects a donation form at the back of the book for some kind of Russian charity.

Volk is a bit too much of a Hollywood-style killing machine, whose grim determination becomes mechanical over time. His soft spot for kids and widows an ex-soldiers is supposed to temper this somewhat, but it comes across more cliched than anything else. He is also humanized somewhat by the presence of his lithe, sexy, and deadly teen girlfriend/partner Valya. They met in Chechnya under somewhat hazy circumstances and have clung to each other ever since. She's also a bit of a standard type, as are just about all of the characters. This is less of a flaw among the supporting cast, as the reader is not asked to invest as much in them. But then again, one doesn't read a book like this for the characters, one reads it for the plot twists, action, and vivid locales (here Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and New York) -- and it delivers all of these with gusto. The book ends with the hint of further adventures to come, although I'm not sure I really care to spend another 300 pages with such a nasty protagonist. But for those who like their thrillers bursting with color and blood, this is just the ticket.

Alexei Vokovoy straddles two sinister worlds where he reports to two powerful men who can take everything he cares for, including his life, with the snap of a finger. This small space he occupies wedged between two masters allows him to conduct his own counter intelligence against those who desire to see him dead.

Volk's Game is a powerful, visual read that captures the attention of anyone interested in espionage and intrigue. Centered on the mythical existence of Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece, Leda and the Swan, Alexei, a veteran of Russia's brutal war in Chechnya, has been ordered to bring this prize to an underworld Russian Mafioso and the general of the Red Army. Lost in a maze of deception, together with his companion Valya, a homegrown assassin, must decide whom they can trust and how they can escape alive with this highly priced piece of art.

I grew up reading espionage and absolutely loved this book. It has all of the elements of deception, murder and the twists and turns of uncovering the truth from enemies and comrades. Truly I was on the edge of my seat until the end. Sadly, I must wait for the launching of the author's next installment.

Ghelfi, a former lawyer, has beyond doubt discovered his next career. Like Robert Ludlum, Brent Ghelfi has introduced a protagonist who has a life of his own beyond the pages of Volk's Game.

Armchair Interviews says: Whew! What a ride, what a read.

This debut novel set in modern-day Russia is a lot of things. It's a bit formulaic, filled with a lot of characters whose sole purpose is to die violently, provides glimpses into the most vile precincts of organized crime, has its share of cliches, and introduces an almost indestructible (I'm not kidding here. Think The Terminator.) main character. But for all of that, I found it immensely readable. The Chechnyan war and its attendant brutality, rarely reported in the West save for Beslan level atrocities, is a brilliant choice for Alexei Volkonoy's battlefield. The effect of such warfare on the Soviet soldiers there might well produce a Volk or two in the new Russia.

The oomparisons to Forsyth may be valid, but I am more reminded of Andrew Vacchs' "Burke" novels. Same type hero: brutal and merciless when required but basically a decent man, albeit wounded physically and mentally, in a dark world dispensing street justice. Rather like the Punisher in the graphic novels. Ultimately, Volk is a pawn, but a deadly one and one who lives and is willing to die for his personal code of honor.

A couple of minor complaints: would a Russian talk about something being "catty cornered" instead of the Soviet equivalent? And Volk a colonel? For some reason authors love that rank but given Volk's background and age, Captain, if he were an officer at all and not a senior NCO, would have been more appropriate.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I'm looking forward to the next one, although I have to say that this initial outing will be hard to beat! I trust it has been optioned for the movies; done properly with the right casting, it could be a box office winner. But don't wait. Read this now.

Pity the Russians, a people scarred by their country's repeated strivings for empire, now locked in a transition from a collectivist society that promised little for all to a form of capitalism that, under the Putin regime, delivers many to some and none to others. Russia's DNA is encoded for endurance, not stability and optimism.

Brent Ghelfi understands that dynamic. His debut thriller, "Volk's Game," captures the Russian spirit, that weird combination of brutal strength and mournful acceptance of hardship that's mixed with a fatalism that's native to the Russian character. Readers should be warned: there is plenty of action, but also no hope nor heroes.

Alexei Volkovoy is a gangster in Moscow who provides whatever illegal delights his foreign businessmen clients want. He also works for a man known only as the General, a Russian army officer headquartered in the weeping stone catacombs near the Kremlin, whose life Volk saved in Chechnya. It's a brutal life, but better than war, capture and torture at the hands of Chechen rebel. Only the small acts of charity -- giving money to war widows and arranging adoptions for foundlings -- give him, well, not so much hope, but possibly some relief from his misery.

With his lover and partner, Valya, Volk is hired to spirit out of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg a "lost" painting called "Leda and the Swan" by one L. DaVinci. As expected, there are crosses and double-crosses, and Volk sets off to recover the painting with the directness of a laser and pitilessness of a tiger. What makes this hunt different, is something Volk didn't expect. He fell in love with a painting. "I lust for her beyond reason as I scheme," he reflects, amazed at how a dab of paint on a wooden panel can find a living nerve deep within his deadened soul.

There are no heroes in "Volk's Game." Even Volk is a hard man to find sympathy with, but Ghelfi finds the key to his character that doesn't make him into an angel with dirty faces, nor a killer with a heart of gold. It's a thriller that challenges the mind as it tingles the nerves.

In today's Russia, Alexei Volk dabbles in everything from drugs to porn.He also works for brutal crime boss Maxim Abdullaev and the mysterious General.Both Maxim and the General use Volk for their own purposes which leads to serious complications for Volk.The plot of this story has Volk hunting for a lost Da Vinci painting called Leda and The Swan.While Volk searches other parties hunt Volk and will stop at nothing to ensure that he does not get his hands on the painting.The writing for 300 pages is tight and muscular,no wasted words.The violence is brutal and bloody.If you enjoy Barry Eisler's John Rain series you'll get a kick out of Volk.

About halfway through this riveting and absorbing work, it struck me that Brent Ghelfi's debut novel was the product of cross-media influences. It's as if he had written the book while channeling Mickey Spillane, listening through headphones to "Fun House" by The Stooges and sitting before an enlarged reproduction of the central panel of THE LAST JUDGEMENT by Hieronymus Bosch. VOLK'S GAME is as nightmarish, stunning and brilliant as all of these.

The landscape of the novel is Moscow, where only the truly evil possess the requisite tools for survival. Alexei Volkovoy is a veteran of the Russian Army's war in Chechnya, a man left permanently scarred and deformed, both internally and externally. Volk is much more than what he seems, a figure of power and inherent contradictions; he is a major force in the Moscow black market while functioning as an undercover agent for the Russian military. Volk's partner, economically and emotionally, is a waiflike woman named Valya, who is almost childlike in appearance yet is every bit as deadly as he is.

Volk, for all his power, serves two kingpins whose spheres of influence coincide with his own. One is The General, a diminutive but extremely dangerous figure in the Russian Army; the other is Maxim, a Russian mafia kingpin whose tendrils of influence reach into places that even Volk can't imagine. Both men order Volk to steal an improbable prize, a long-lost fabled painting of Da Vinci's titled Leda and the Swan. Volk is not the only soul in quest of this work, and the duplicity, subterfuge and death-dealing brutality that he encounters and dispenses during his quest is made all the more mind-boggling by the true-to-life backdrop of Moscow and Eastern Europe that Ghelfi infuses into every page and paragraph of the novel.

One has no idea what is going to happen from moment to moment, and Volk's cold amorality lends an additional element of uncertainty to the proceedings. This is made more so by the sliver of morality and vulnerability he clings to so that his humanity, already fully submerged, does not drown in the sea of brutality in which he finds himself yet is totally necessary if he is going to complete his mission intact, let alone successfully.

Ghelfi's prose is like a dark drug that pulls you further under its spell with each taste, so that by the end of the book, the reader is exhausted and, though satiated, ready and frantic for more. The author is reportedly working on a sequel to VOLK'S GAME; it cannot come too soon.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I read thrillers - and one of my favorite authors is Greg Iles - on his website, he said that he was asked to read and write a blurb for a new thriller, Volk's Game, and to give it a chance - it was different, more violent, but a good read. Well, Iles is right and wrong. It is an excellent debut novel. The down side is you really do not care about a single character in the book, especially Volk, a player in Russia's sleezier underworld. This deals with an art theft of DaVinci's Leda and the Swan, found to be in the bowels of Russian's Hermitage. Cross and double crosses come into play - nothing is what it seems to be, there is no good guy/bad guy.
I really tried to like this book. It had all the makings of a great ride. But take the humanity out of characters, even the 'anti-hero' and others and you have a lot of action, but no heart. Subsequent sequels will go on without me.