Гонки по вертикали

by Arkady Vayner, Georgy Vayner

Между следователем Станиславом Тихоновым и рецидивистом Лехой Дедушкиным давняя и непримиримая борьба, и это не просто борьба опытного криминалиста с дерзким и даровитым преступником, это столкновение двух взаимоисключающих мировоззрений.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2015

About the author

Arkady Vayner (1938 - 2009) was a Russian playwright and author. After graduating from high school with honors, he entered the Moscow Aviation Institute, and later joined the law faculty at Moscow State University.

Together with his brother, Georgy Vayner, he is the author of many works of detective stories, often taken from their own forensic practice. In addition, Vainer wrote plays and scripts for film and television.

Reviews

[Tububa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this is quite a departure for the Vayner brothers. I think they decided to get all experimental here. I am not sure what their writing process was, but there are a few indications in their novels that perhaps one of them wanted to veer off into historical fiction, and the other maintained an interest in detective fiction. The result is sometimes pretentious (Лекарство против страха, Визит к минотавру) but generally enjoyable for detective fiction fans. (There is even a version on Youtube of the film based on the first novel that excises all the Paracelsus bits, so one can enjoy just the mystery... what does that tell you?)

Anyway, in Гонки по вертикали, the two-author gimmick is that the story alternates chapterwise between the detective's perspective and the criminal's. The detective is Tikhonov. The criminal is Dedushkin, a suitcase thief. The crime? Well, that's where the problem lies. There isn't much of a crime. A suitcase is stolen. We know who the thief is. We even have the suitcase. That's the source of the problem with this book as a mystery--there is no mystery. There is a bit of suspense stemming from the fact that the cops have to let Dedushkin go free, since they have failed to locate the owner of the suitcase, and they are having difficulty proving that the suitcase isn't Dedushkin's. I had a hard time believing this.

I also had a hard time believing that the MUR (this is the Moscow Criminal Investigation bureau, a unit for supposedly major crimes) would invest quite this much time on such a petty crime. There is an attempt towards the end of the book to tie all of this to some nefarious European crime syndicate, but by then my disbelief was hopeless. Much ado about a suitcase, this.

So I think this fails as a mystery. How does it fare as literature? Well, I thought the Dedushkin chapters were alright. He is given a grotesque backstory--a brutal, squalid upbringing in a horrible family. Such gargoyles would not disgrace a Dickens book. As a result, his misanthropy and antisocial bent is believable, and he is even somewhat sympathetic. But we're supposed to be on Tikhonov's side, and his character is just ... not that interesting. He has an underdeveloped love interest with some woman who is barely a cardboard cutout. For reasons that are never really clarified, everyone dismisses Tikhonov's job as meaningless. He philosophizes on empty, inflated topics. Have I bored you yet? Well, it's nothing to how I felt reading his chapters. You don't want him to get the girl, and you halfway don't want him to get Dedushkin, he's so dull.

So yeah, this is definitely a dud for the Vayners. Pretty much any of the other Tikhonov books is going to be a better mystery novel and better literature.

P. S. Just remembered the felt slippers! A dubious metaphor for bourgeois comforts. Repeated to a point where even a total idiot would get it. They were mentioned so often that was inspired to make myself some felt slippers as a result!

[Masha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Великолепно! Такие глубокие и проникновенные философские размышления. Сюжет развивается медленно, постепенно, но до чего каждая фраза берет за душу. Проникаешься сочувствием ко всем персонажам истории, даже самым незначительным. В каждом человеке , даже отпетом мошеннике есть глубина души, непонятой , не достигнутой даже самим владельцем.
От души благодарю авторов!