Le pope est mort

Porfiry Rostnikov #8

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Du temps de l'ex-U.R.S.S., Vassili Merhum, le pope du village d'Arkouch, avait toujours su tenir tête au KGB, aux dirigeants de l'Etat, et même aux chefs de sa propre église. Et la chute du socialisme ne l'avait pas rendu naïf au point de croire que la nouvelle Russie allait apporter au peuple la liberté politique et religieuse. Aussi, ce jour-là, après l'office, le pope parlerait sur la Place Rouge devant les caméras de la télévision. Il donnerait les noms de ceux qui assassinaient et torturaient sous l'Ancien Régime, les mêmes qui, aujourd'hui, réclamaient de la démocratie. Il exigerait qu'ils soient traduits en justice.

Mais entre l'église de Vassili Merhum et la Place Rouge se lève la hache d'un tueur mystérieux... Et il revient à Porphyri Petrovitch Rostnikov de trouver qui est ce Oleg dont le père Merhum a prononcé le nom avant de mourir.

Genres: Mystery, Russia, Crime, Fiction

254 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1992

About the author

Stuart M. Kaminsky wrote 50 published novels, 5 biographies, 4 textbooks and 35 short stories. He also has screenwriting credits on four produced films including ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, ENEMY TERRITORY, A WOMAN IN THE WIND and HIDDEN FEARS. He was a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and was nominated for six prestigious Edgar Allen Poe Awards including one for his short story “Snow” in 1999. He won an Edgar for his novel A COLD RED SUNRISE, which was also awarded the Prix De Roman D’Aventure of France. He was nominated for both a Shamus Award and a McCavity Readers Choice Award.

Kaminsky wrote several popular series including those featuring Lew Fonesca, Abraham Lieberman, Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, and Toby Peters. He also wrote two original "Rockford Files " novels. He was the 50th annual recipient of the Grandmaster 2006 for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America.

Received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievement award) in 2007.

His nonfiction books including BASIC FILMMAKING, WRITING FOR TELEVISION, AMERICAN FILM GENRES, and biographies of GARY COOPER, CLINT EASTWOOD, JOHN HUSTON and DON SIEGEL. BEHIND THE MYSTERY was published by Hot House Press in 2005 and nominated by Mystery Writers of America for Best Critical/Biographical book in 2006.

Kaminsky held a B.S. in Journalism and an M.A. in English from The University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Speech from Northwestern University where he taught for 16 years before becoming a Professor at Florida State. where he headed the Graduate Conservatory in Film and Television Production. He left Florida State in 1994 to pursue full-time writing.

Kaminsky and his wife, Enid Perll, moved to St. Louis, Missouri in March 2009 to await a liver transplant to treat the hepatitis he contracted as an army medic in the late 1950s in France. He suffered a stroke two days after their arrival in St. Louis, which made him ineligible for a transplant. He died on October 9, 2009.

Reviews

[Zain · Rating 5 out of 5]

More Than A Russian Priest.

Inspector Rostnikov and Emil Karpo are investigating the murder of a Russian priest. They have traveled to the city of Arkush to find some suspects. They have to wheedle them down.

It seems as though the priest was well loved, but that didn’t stop someone from killing him.

After the priest is killed, a nun is murdered soon after. Now they have to investigate her death, too. And hurry it up before the murderer kills somebody else.

Back in Moscow, Sasha Tkach is teamed up with a partner. They are investigating the disappearance of a Syrian girl named, Adima. But they don’t get along with each other.

They have to search for a new tip. The girl seems to be all over the place. And other people are looking for her, too. And her friends are getting murdered.

So it seems that Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, Emil Karpo and Sasha Tkach are all over the place trying to find out who the criminals are. I know that they will definitely do it. I have faith in them.

Five stars. ✨✨✨✨✨

[Marty Fried · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, a pleasure to read, with interesting people, complex mystery, and a look at life in Russia during the days of Boris Yeltsin right after the USSR breakup. Times were tough, and even if you had money, it was not easy to find goods for sale. In one place, someone was looking for food, and skipped all the stores without a line, because that meant there was no food. We get a look at what it was like for the people living at that time, and how they got by day to day.

There were several simultaneous mysteries going on at the same time in this book, which are not necessarily connected, unless I missed something (which is possible).

[Michael Martz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuart Kaminsky's Moscow detective Rostnikov has become a favorite in this genre. He's an older cop with a bad leg due to a war injury, immensely strong, principled, surrounded by the seismic changes brought to Russia by Perestroika. Rostnikov is not what you'd call a hard-charger- he's more of a thinking man's detective. His internal monologs as he faces the challenges of daily life in Russia are dry as sand and often quite funny. His 2nd in command, Karpov, is another unforgettable character in the series, often described as having a vampire-like presence and appearance. For some reason, I always think that Richard Belzer would play him in a movie adaptation.

So, in this installment a beloved Orthodox priest is murdered in a small town outside of Moscow and due to the nature of the crime the heavy hitters from the capital city are called in. Rostnikov catches the assignment but a competing department is watching the investigation closely. In fact, if there's a distinguishing characteristic of life in Russia in those days it would seem to be that everyone was being watched by someone, they knew it, and acted accordingly. Rostnikov and Karpo travel to the village, encounter the expected mix of unsophisticated country folk, and are soon thrown into a second murder, this time of a nun. Meanwhile back at the ranch, the daughter of a powerful and connected Arab is missing and 2 young members of Rostnikov's team are given the assignment to find her.

Kaminski is great at developing his characters and his portrayals of the indignities faced by 'normal' people whose professions would be considered middle class in the US are presented with both dignity and humor. The plots in The Death of a Russian Priest aren't much and the cases are solved relatively quickly, but the real strength of the series is the backdrop of Russian life in a period not all that long ago.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuart Kaminsky won the Edgar for A Cold Red Sunrise, but I think this book is much better. Again, what Kaminsky excels at is not so much the mystery end of writing (he is probably average at that). Kaminsky makes the reader feel that they are in a Russia, in this case Moscow and Arkush, that is undergoing change much as Rostnikov has. Kaminsky also make the reader feel as if they know these characters, and are right next to them while on the case or in their apartments.

Rostnikov and Karpo are sent to Arkush to investigate the murder of an outspoken priest and glasnost or not, the church is a politically charged matter in Russia. For Rostnikov is becomes a travel through the past as he discovers the priest's secret and he tries to recall his own childhood as a way to stay in touch with who he is becoming. Karpo, who's entire belief system was built on the Soviet state has an interesting meeting with a nun (who is later murdered) and Karpo's bedrock faith in the revolution is shaken, perhaps to his core and the question for Karpo becomes what will be his new belief system, what will keep him sane.

As a side story Sasha is bemoaning, yes really whining and depressed, about turning 30, and he does not like his new partner Elena the niece of his and Rostnikov's former superior when they were with the Procurator General's office. Their case of the missing Syrian oil minister's daughter takes the most turns.

Rostnikov's troubles with the KGB are building, as the KGB has its own plans for growing its power during glasnost.

The book continues a journey begun the prior volume. Rostnikov remains a dogged and determined investigator, but he is becoming a man seeking to become more human and humane is how he handles his investigations.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good series about a Russian detective in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This one is about the murder of a priest who was about to go to Moscow to give a speech. Several overlapping plots as the power shifts in the post Soviet era. The murder of a Jewish student who was the lover of a rich Arab's daughter who is now missing, attempts by one branch of the service to rise in power while outshining another branch and the lengths that the colonels will go to to come out on top.
Rostnikov is one of Kaminsky's strongest characters

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those were heady times for the West as the old Soviet Union crumbled before our eyes. Gorbachev’s reforms. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The old guard coup that failed. Then the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, the rise of Boris Yeltsin, and the free market reforms. For us, the changes were exhilarating. But for Russians it was a nightmare. Everything they had known, all the certainties in their lives, Communism itself—it was all falling apart. And that is the background so artfully pictured in Stuart Kaminsky’s clever Russian murder mystery, Death of a Russian Priest.

A WRENCHING CHANGE FOR MOSCOW’S POLICE
For years, Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his small team of detectives in the Ministry of Internal Affairs were on the sidelines. Officially, they and their boss, the vainglorious Colonel Alexandr Snitkonoy, were permitted only to take on minor cases. The KGB handled everything political—and every case was political, if they willed it so. Rostnikov undertook major investigations only by subterfuge and bending, or breaking, the rules.

But now the world has turned upside down. The KGB is officially gone. And Colonel Snitkonoy, “the Gray Wolfhound,” is in the ascendancy. “His mission prior to the new directive had been almost entirely ceremonial,” Kaminsky writes, “but all that had changed. The Gray Wolfhound and his men now had the official responsibility for politically sensitive cases that no other branch would touch. In short, the Gray Wolfhound’s Special Section was now the unofficial scapegoat of the new and not yet clearly defined criminal justice system.” And so it is that when news reaches Moscow of the murder of a famously outspoken village priest, it’s Rostnikov who is assigned to the case.

THE GOD THAT FAILED
Father Vasili Merhum is dead. The priest, who is known throughout Russia for speaking out against the repression of the Orthodox Church, has been brutally murdered and dismembered with an axe. And no one in the village of Arkush is able to identify the assassin except the man himself. For Rostnikov and his colleague, Emil Karpo (“The Vulture”), the mystery will call upon their deepest reserves of observation and insight. Yet Rostnikov is preoccupied with family responsibilities, and Karpo is out of sorts. The Vulture is experiencing the confusion and rootlessness reflected in that famous 1949 book of essays about disillusionment with Communism, The God That Failed.

“For more than forty years of his life,” Karpo reflects, “all meaning had been contained in the Soviet state and the revolution. The function of Emil Karpo had been to obey his superiors and locate and bring to justice all criminals, all enemies of the revolution. The union was gone. . . The party was underground, crying in pain, dying. The revolution was gone and there was nothing ahead but a gray imitation of the Western democracies.”

AN UNPRECEDENTED TURN TO VIOLENCE
Meanwhile, the third member of Rostnikov’s little team, young Sasha Tkach, has troubles of his own—and is acting out in uncharacteristic ways. With a newly assigned partner in tow, Sasha stands patiently in line at a food truck waiting for what seems an interminable time for a pizza. And when at last the pair reach the head of the line, the owner announces there are no more pizzas. Sasha pulls the man from the truck and proceeds to beat him savagely until, at last, the man’s partner offers up the one pizza they’d been saving for themselves. And this is not the young detective’s only turn to violence. Like so many others in Boris Yeltsin’s new Russia, Sasha is coming unhinged.

And no wonder. “The price of everything had gone up with Yeltsin’s free market insanity,” Sasha muses. Salaries that were pitifully low before the wave of changes now fall far short of covering even life’s necessities. A tragedy for Sasha, with a young daughter and a pregnant wife at home. And the perestroika launched five years earlier by Mikhail Gorbachev has introduced massive confusion, shuffling, merging, and abolishing government departments right and left. All too often, there’s no there, there, to misuse Gertrude Stein’s famous quip.

DESPITE THE CHANGES, THE KGB LIVES ON
While Rostnikov, Karpo, and Tkach are struggling with the new conditions imposed on their lives, larger shifts are underway in Russia. The ruthless men at the helm of the old KGB are intent on regaining their power over the citizenry. The KGB colonel who had made Rostnikov’s life miserable is now gone. But his successor, a devious and resourceful secret policeman, has set out to displace Rostnikov’s boss, Colonel Snitkonoy. Using the more limited resources now at his disposal, he has sent operatives to spy on Rostnikov, Karpo, and Tkach, hoping to catch them in errors and steal the credit for their successes in the field. When he demonstrates the Gray Wolfhound’s blunders and his own success in stopping crime, he will elevate his own department above Snitkonoy’s.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stuart Kaminsky died in 2009. In his obituary in the New York Times, Margalit Fox wrote, “Stuart M. Kaminsky, a film scholar turned detective novelist who was widely known for his prodigious output, complex characters and rich evocations of time and place, including Hollywood in its Golden Age, died on Friday in St. Louis. He was 75. The cause was hepatitis C, which Mr. Kaminsky contracted as an Army medic in the late 1950s, his wife, Enid Perll, said. . .

“The author of more than 60 crime novels, Mr. Kaminsky typically wrote two or more books a year. A past president of the Mystery Writers of America, he was named a Grand Master, the organization’s highest honor, in 2006.”

The Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov books constitute one of three long-running series of crime novels Kaminsky wrote. He won an Edgar Award in 1989 for one of the novels in the series.

[Nancy Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fast read as long as you don't try and pronouce all the Russian names. I enjoyed the book, although much of the story was not so much a mystery , but more of a story about the state of Russia after the fall of the Berlin wall. Enjoyable and I certainly would read more of Mr. Kaminsky's series.

[Delphine Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had so much potential and such interesting characters. I also loved the premise of the story’s setting, a mystery set during the Yeltsin period. That being said, there was so much wrong in the book. First of all, nuns do not say the rosary in the Orthodox Church. That is a Roman Catholic practice. Monks often have prayer ropes to say the Jesus prayer and I’m sure nuns can do the same. Also, the presence of a Roman Catholic saint icon in a priest’s house in Russia? I think not. Who would have painted it and where would it have come from? That made no sense at all. The fact that the author did not have someone from the Orthodox faith proofread the book was remiss at best, and it made me question other things in the book that might have actually been legitimate.
Also the word “the” in the book was substituted by the word “me” which made the sentences nonsensical in at least four different sentences. Also transitions in a couple of cases were so wrong, the paragraphs contradicted each other. Was this book ever proofread? It is literally the worst Kindle book I have ever read as far as mistakes go. I was pretty disappointed overall in my reading experience.

[Willie Kirschner · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fan of Kaminsky, I was saddened by his death last year. After reading his Abe Lieberman and Lew Fonesca stories, I started his Inspector Rosnikov stories and have been working my way through them.

I have come to know the characters in these books and to enjoy them and recommend them to anyone interested in these types of stories.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite installment thus far in the series, this one brings interesting changes to the characters who have become beloved. As usual plot depth or intricacy is not an aimif the author, who instead creates both beloved characters and a tangible sense of time & place. Perestroika from the average Russian’s poont of view.

[Richard Gruner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peristroika

An illustration of the Byzantine paranoia common in Russia, as the KGB struggles to remain relevant. One small editing error is annoying; "the" sometimes appears as "me."

[John R. Goyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaminsky is a great writer, but nowhere is that so clear as with the Rostnikov series. Subtle, observant, humorous - drily - and totally enjoyable. Excellent to spend time with such interesting characters and in such interesting locations. Exceptional.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Series keeps getting better and better... characters grow... plots and subplots thicken!

[Rebecca Hock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reading this series of mysteries in order and am really enjoying them. They seem to get better with each book. I would recommend this series to others who enjoy a good mystery.

[Robert Peck · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Kaminski Gem

This story is very rich in Russian culture and history. If course the case seems strange and confusing. Yet the solution is understandable if twisted. Enjoyable.

[William Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story line as usual with Donna Leon.

[Beth Slucher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing story.

[Mel Ow · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not keep my attention.

[Joshua Gamradt · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, something clicked for Kaminsky in this one. I love reading the early part of the series too, but his maturity with the characters hit a different level.

[MarcNYC · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading Rostnikov's series in sequence, so far this is the weakest offering

[Pegeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peristroika and Glasnost bring with them a crisis for all the characters. Especially Karpo.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rostnikov's team investigate a series of deaths and the disappearance of a young girl while internal forces are working against them in the new era of Glasnost.

[Suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Which means, thought Rostnikov, that if the killer is not found, it will be considered a government cover-up. If the killer is found, it will be accepted as a frame-up. The situation was a familiar one. A change of flags did not change a national psyche. This book takes place after the "fall of communism" and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

[Peter Barr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of a series of police novels regarding Moscow detectives. The main character is Porfiry Rostnikov and the cases they work this time are the murder of a priest and the disappearance of a young Syrian woman. This is a very readable story and ends with questions of it's own. One of my favorite series.

[Ric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, characters continue their development, changing as their environment changes. Excellent stories within stories. What is fiction may be more real to reality then one expects. The ending makes the reader want to go on and see how our hero solves this development in his life.

[Raquel Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Série de autor Americano sobre um inspector Russo, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov , passado na época de Ieltsin, que foi uma época difícil para a Rússia saída da União Soviética.
É o livro oito de uma série de 16, e foi uma leitura extremamente interessante, fez-me já comprar mais três desta série.

[Amy Kachavos]

Only ok.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful series -