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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging mystery-suspense novel in an exciting historical setting,
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This review is from: Zugzwang (Paperback)
"Zugzwang" is a well-written, taut thriller, with two added twists: the historical backdrop in 1913 St. Petersburg, Russia, and a recurring chess-related motive. The latter leads to the title of the novel, "zugzwang" being a particular type of position in advanced chess play (more on this below).
First about the setting in pre world war I Russia. One of the main historical elements is a chess tournament that really did take place in St. Petersburg in 1914 and that featured the entire world elite. The sad figure of Rosenblum in the novel was almost certainly inspired by the Polish chess master Rubinstein, who was considered to be the worlds greatest player at one point, but failed to demonstrate this at the St Petersburg tournament, thus missing his opportunity to land a deal on playing the reigning world champion, Emmanuel Lasker in a direct match for the crown. The story line and main events of this book are, however, entirely fictional. They involve murder and suspicion, complex relationships, and the murky world of illegal organizations and secret police. Mr. Bennett is a skillful writer and he succesfully blends the modern historical novel with the mystery/suspense aspect. It seems he really does enjoy mixing genres, for he introduces, about midway the book, a rather graphic and explicit erotic intermezzo. Besides being an effective suspense novel, this book has a major strength and a surprising weakness. The strength is the depiction of pre-worldwar I Russian society. I am no expert on it, but reading this novel the entire situation came to life in a compelling and convincing manner. The searing contrast between the plight of the poor masses and the extraordinary luxury of the upper classes; the simmering anti-semitism, threatening even the modern secularized Jewish middle class; the resentment by the subjugated people within the vast Russian empire, such as the Polish; the chaos of competing movements within this monolithic system; and the palpable threat of revolution - which as we now know did eventually occur. The references provided in the postscript support the impression that Mr. Bennett has studied this subject in a serious and scolarly manner, for which he deserves credit. The weakness in this novel is more surprising: the allusion to the chess motive "zugzwang" doesn't hold. The term is correctly explained before the novel starts: a situation in which any move that a player makes leads to a worse position or a loss. The chess game that is interwoven throughout the book also illustrates this idea (note that the author is a very good chess player and chess writer; for the uninitiated, he attempts to explain the ideas and the game in the book. I doubt, however, that the explanations will suffice for those who do no have a significant background in chess.) But in applying the idea of "zugzwang" to the story itself, the author seems to have lost sight of one of the central points of "zugzwang": that the position is actually ok as long as you don't have to make a move - in other words, if in chess you were allowed to "pass" and not make a move at all, then you would be all right. But that is precisely the point: in chess you are not allowed to "pass", your move is forced (move=zug, force=zwang, in German), and down you go. And by the way, while this may sound like a far-fetched and unlikely situation in chess to the non-expert, it is in fact a very common motive in the end-game phase of games at the expert level. Bobby Fisher was defeated in the first game of his world-championship match with Boris Spassky in 1971 when the latter was able to use a zugzwang motive to his advantage. In this novel, unfortunately, there is no equivalent situation. Instead, the situation here is one that a lay person might understand as "zugzwang" but that really isn't: a situation where the circumstances force you to make a move, because if you don't do anything you are lost. So in the novel the main character is forced to move, yes, but not doing anything at all would be even more disastrous and, in contrast to a true zugzwang, making the right move can actually get him out of trouble. I rather suspect that Mr. Bennett was aware of this minor discrepancy, because way at the end of the novel he introduces, not entirely convincingly, a different way in which the zugzwang-motive can be related to the novel. All in all, and the little weakness notwithstanding, this is a very good mystery-suspense novel which for the interested gains immensely from being placed in a skillfully developed historical context.Warmly recommended.
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