What do you think?
Rate this book
Porfiry Rostnikov #10
Blod & rubler
Kriminaliteten er ond i nutidens Moskva, hvor kommunismens fald og markedskræfternes frie spol har udløst en eksplosion af korruption og forbrydelse - lige fra børnebander, der begår mord, og mafiaens massakrer og handel med kernekraftmaterialer til kidnapning og simpel kriminalitet, hvor et væld af almindelige mennesker supplerer privatøkonomien som meddelere blot for et par ekstra rubler eller lidt mad.
Det er i dette inferno af kriminalitet og desperation, at den lune og lidt skæve kriminalkommissær Porfiryj Petrovitj Rostnikov og hans team forsøger at arbejde. Rostnikav, eller badekarret som han også bliver kaldt, er tidligere vægtløfter og plaget af et dårligt ben, der gør ham halt, og så laver han blikkenslagerarbejde, når han skal slappe af.
Blod & rubler giver et fascinerende indblik i en by, hvor det er svært at blive ved med at finde noget at tro på.
Det er i dette inferno af kriminalitet og desperation, at den lune og lidt skæve kriminalkommissær Porfiryj Petrovitj Rostnikov og hans team forsøger at arbejde. Rostnikav, eller badekarret som han også bliver kaldt, er tidligere vægtløfter og plaget af et dårligt ben, der gør ham halt, og så laver han blikkenslagerarbejde, når han skal slappe af.
Blod & rubler giver et fascinerende indblik i en by, hvor det er svært at blive ved med at finde noget at tro på.
292 pages, Unbound
First published February 13, 1996
84 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Stuart M. Kaminsky
169 books213 followersStuart 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
May 16, 2023
Capitalism has invaded the new Russia (just before Putin). Brutal crimes are the order of the day. It’s up to Porfiry Rostnikov and his police crew to do what they can to make life a little more tolerable for beleaguered Muskovites. It’s obviously hopeless but there are a few good men and women left.
“The plumbing in this building, like most the buildings in Moscow, is similar to our government,” Rostnikov said, putting down the rusted section of pipe…It’s rusty and rotten. Soon …leaks everywhere. The system is falling apart. It has to be replaced but the cost is great.” That from our hero whose idea of relaxation is plumbing in his building where no one else repairs things. His policing is also based on trying to put a finger to the leaks and keep some semblance of order in the new Russia.
The four simultaneously described cases here are fairly predictable. Rostnikov, a young black CIA agent temporarily inserted into his group and his usual crew scramble to solve some difficult cases. It is fun and cynical.
The beauty of Kaminsky’s series is found in the characters, their families and the attempts to hold body and soul together in a place where the government frustrates at every turn.
“The plumbing in this building, like most the buildings in Moscow, is similar to our government,” Rostnikov said, putting down the rusted section of pipe…It’s rusty and rotten. Soon …leaks everywhere. The system is falling apart. It has to be replaced but the cost is great.” That from our hero whose idea of relaxation is plumbing in his building where no one else repairs things. His policing is also based on trying to put a finger to the leaks and keep some semblance of order in the new Russia.
The four simultaneously described cases here are fairly predictable. Rostnikov, a young black CIA agent temporarily inserted into his group and his usual crew scramble to solve some difficult cases. It is fun and cynical.
The beauty of Kaminsky’s series is found in the characters, their families and the attempts to hold body and soul together in a place where the government frustrates at every turn.
April 5, 2022
This was my 4th Rostnikov, and probably my last.
Great characters and settings, but I am weary of the 2-3 independent plot lines, as our police team members go in separate directions.
I may trudge onward to see what happens next to Sasha, Emil, and Elena.
Great characters and settings, but I am weary of the 2-3 independent plot lines, as our police team members go in separate directions.
I may trudge onward to see what happens next to Sasha, Emil, and Elena.
June 9, 2019
After a 2-week tour of Russia, I was especially struck by this quotation early in the book:
“The pedestrian does not have the right of way?” “The pedestrian doesn’t have much of anything,” said Rostnikov.
Published in 2012, Blood and Rubles features the familiar and entirely admirable detective Profiry Rostnikov (aka Washtub) and his fascinating team, including Karpo (aka The Vampire because of his grim, deathly pale countenance) and Pannin.
You don't have to read these books in order, but the publication date indicates whether the mystery will be set in the Soviet era, the chaotic Gorbachev/Yeltsin years, or on Putin's watch. All have their problems, and the cumulative effect on the Russian psyche is awful:
“Over eight hundred years of trying to outwit authorities who can do what they want to you makes a people suspicious of authority and turns many of them into good and devious actors.”
The fall of Communism made the work of the police far more difficult:
"Now no one except the corrupt, the desperate, the stupid, and the psychotic seemed to want the low-paying, dangerous, and despised job of being a police officer."
Rostnikov heads the Office of Special Investigations, located in a rundown building in central Moscow:
"The police station had been built in 1946 as a school. Now it was falling apart, as were most of the district stations, which occupied whatever space had been found for them—old apartment buildings, taxi garages, large shops. One district station had once been a toy store. Some of the walls of the former toy store were still covered with fading cartoon drawings of Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Yogi Bear."
Nevertheless, Rostnikov and his team soldier on, and it makes for a very good read.
“The pedestrian does not have the right of way?” “The pedestrian doesn’t have much of anything,” said Rostnikov.
Published in 2012, Blood and Rubles features the familiar and entirely admirable detective Profiry Rostnikov (aka Washtub) and his fascinating team, including Karpo (aka The Vampire because of his grim, deathly pale countenance) and Pannin.
You don't have to read these books in order, but the publication date indicates whether the mystery will be set in the Soviet era, the chaotic Gorbachev/Yeltsin years, or on Putin's watch. All have their problems, and the cumulative effect on the Russian psyche is awful:
“Over eight hundred years of trying to outwit authorities who can do what they want to you makes a people suspicious of authority and turns many of them into good and devious actors.”
The fall of Communism made the work of the police far more difficult:
"Now no one except the corrupt, the desperate, the stupid, and the psychotic seemed to want the low-paying, dangerous, and despised job of being a police officer."
Rostnikov heads the Office of Special Investigations, located in a rundown building in central Moscow:
"The police station had been built in 1946 as a school. Now it was falling apart, as were most of the district stations, which occupied whatever space had been found for them—old apartment buildings, taxi garages, large shops. One district station had once been a toy store. Some of the walls of the former toy store were still covered with fading cartoon drawings of Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Yogi Bear."
Nevertheless, Rostnikov and his team soldier on, and it makes for a very good read.
March 12, 2024
CRIME AND CORRUPTION IN BORIS YELTSIN'S RUSSIA
Over the three-decade period from 1981 to 2009, American crime novelist Stuart Kaminsky wrote a series of sixteen police procedurals that reflected the shifting reality in Russian society. During that time, the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Republic, underwent cataclysmic change. The country’s economic system lurched from top-down state socialism to crony capitalism. Control of the government passed from anti-American hard-line Communists to pro-American democratic reformers to an insular, autocratic oligarchy openly hostile to the US.
At every step along the way, Kaminsky’s Moscow-based detectives faced new challenges as the rules, and the men who set them, constantly shifted without warning. In his tenth novel of crime in Russia, Blood and Rubles, published in 1996, Kaminsky portrays Russian society in the mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin, when crime and corruption flourished and poverty spread like an unchecked disease.
A TEAM OF TALENTED DETECTIVES
Throughout the three decades of the series, Kaminsky follows the careers of Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and his small team of talented detectives. In Blood and Rubles, they continue to work for Colonel Snitkonoy, the “Gray Wolfhound,” a crafty, vainglorious apparatchik who presides over the Office of Special Investigation. Once hidden in the labyrinth of the Russian bureaucracy and dismissed as a nonentity, the colonel now takes on top-priority cases—and he invariably assigns them to Inspector Rostnikov and his team. This time around there are four simultaneous cases, and each promises to be more frustrating than the others. As always, Rostnikov has no choice but to spread his team thin, dispersing one or two detectives to each of the four investigations.
FOUR TROUBLING CASES THAT ILLUMINATE THE STATE OF RUSSIAN SOCIETY
Every one of the four cases Inspector Rostnikov now takes on brings to light one of the dominant trends in mid-90s Russian society—and a distinct aspect of crime in Russia during its transition from Communism to capitalism.
** Three young boys attack and kill a drunk wandering at night on a Moscow street, and not for the first time. There’s been a series of such murders. But since none of those killed have been important—or their families potential sources of bribes—the police have done nothing.
** Someone has kidnapped a wealthy swindler, “a master of proizvol, the exploitation of a system in confusion.” He’s typical of the opportunists feeding on the rubble of the Communist economy. The kidnappers demand a ransom of three million US dollars of his wife and brother, who are left in command of his businesses.
** A gun battle has broken out on a Moscow street, and several people are dead. A German visitor. A woman sitting at his table in a cafe. And two of the gunmen, shot by the German. Judging from their tattoos, the shooters are members of one of the country’s most deadly gangs, the mafiya of ex-prisoners. And they’re involved somehow in a scheme to smuggle nuclear weapons out of Russia.
A FOURTH CASE RICH IN DRAMATIC POSSIBILITIES
The fourth case is a locked-room mystery. Every one of the four cases might merit a book of its own. But the fourth is especially rich in possibilities.
Inspectors Emil Karpo and Elena Timofeyeva accompany a team from the tax police on a massive raid. When they crash into the home of a suspect as reporters look on, they discover a cavernous, warehouse-like room with shelves stretching almost two stories high. Every shelf is groaning from the weight of priceless antiques from the time of the Tsars. Paintings. Religious icons. Books. Jewelry. Serving dishes. Old microscopes. Manuscripts. Karpo is convinced the horde is worth billions. And presiding over the treasure is an old woman, the sister of the man, now deceased, who’d bought up all these precious objects over many decades.
The tax police leave guards at both the front and back doors, pledging to return in the morning with experts to evaluate and catalog the treasure. But when they do, they’re far from alone. Cops from two different police districts have crowded in, claiming jurisdiction and determined to get a piece of the action. Thus, four different police units are on the scene, each claiming jurisdiction. Confusion abounds because the police “reform” introduced by Yeltsin’s government had left the boundaries loosely defined. Unfortunately, everything in the room has vanished. The old woman says she burned it all. And she won’t say another word until they all leave.
ENTER THE FBI
Somehow, Inspector Rostnikov and his lead detectives—Emil Karpo, Sasha Teach, Elena Timofeyeva—need to tackle all these cases simultaneously. But Colonel Snitkonoy has a surprise in store for them. At their regular morning meeting, he introduces Craig Hamilton, an FBI Special Agent attached to the US Embassy. He’s been sent to Russia to pursue an investigation into the smuggling of nuclear weapons—and it’s he, not Inspector Rostnikov, who will head that case, working with Rostnikov himself. Which means that Rostnikov must reshuffle his team’s assignments. It’s a wonder how everything could possibly work out well. But we know it will.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In the New York Times obituary for Stuart Kaminsky—he died at the age of seventy-five in 2009—Margalit Fox described him as “widely known for his prodigious output, complex characters and rich evocations of time and place.” In his career as a novelist beginning in 1977, he wrote more than sixty crime novels, usually at the rate of two per year. He produced four series, including the longest-running one about Toby Peters, a private detective in 1940s Hollywood, as well as the sixteen books of the Porfiry Rostnikov series. He was nominated for the Edgar Award seven times and won it once, for the Inspector Rostnikov novel, A Cold Red Sunrise.
Over the three-decade period from 1981 to 2009, American crime novelist Stuart Kaminsky wrote a series of sixteen police procedurals that reflected the shifting reality in Russian society. During that time, the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Republic, underwent cataclysmic change. The country’s economic system lurched from top-down state socialism to crony capitalism. Control of the government passed from anti-American hard-line Communists to pro-American democratic reformers to an insular, autocratic oligarchy openly hostile to the US.
At every step along the way, Kaminsky’s Moscow-based detectives faced new challenges as the rules, and the men who set them, constantly shifted without warning. In his tenth novel of crime in Russia, Blood and Rubles, published in 1996, Kaminsky portrays Russian society in the mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin, when crime and corruption flourished and poverty spread like an unchecked disease.
A TEAM OF TALENTED DETECTIVES
Throughout the three decades of the series, Kaminsky follows the careers of Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and his small team of talented detectives. In Blood and Rubles, they continue to work for Colonel Snitkonoy, the “Gray Wolfhound,” a crafty, vainglorious apparatchik who presides over the Office of Special Investigation. Once hidden in the labyrinth of the Russian bureaucracy and dismissed as a nonentity, the colonel now takes on top-priority cases—and he invariably assigns them to Inspector Rostnikov and his team. This time around there are four simultaneous cases, and each promises to be more frustrating than the others. As always, Rostnikov has no choice but to spread his team thin, dispersing one or two detectives to each of the four investigations.
FOUR TROUBLING CASES THAT ILLUMINATE THE STATE OF RUSSIAN SOCIETY
Every one of the four cases Inspector Rostnikov now takes on brings to light one of the dominant trends in mid-90s Russian society—and a distinct aspect of crime in Russia during its transition from Communism to capitalism.
** Three young boys attack and kill a drunk wandering at night on a Moscow street, and not for the first time. There’s been a series of such murders. But since none of those killed have been important—or their families potential sources of bribes—the police have done nothing.
** Someone has kidnapped a wealthy swindler, “a master of proizvol, the exploitation of a system in confusion.” He’s typical of the opportunists feeding on the rubble of the Communist economy. The kidnappers demand a ransom of three million US dollars of his wife and brother, who are left in command of his businesses.
** A gun battle has broken out on a Moscow street, and several people are dead. A German visitor. A woman sitting at his table in a cafe. And two of the gunmen, shot by the German. Judging from their tattoos, the shooters are members of one of the country’s most deadly gangs, the mafiya of ex-prisoners. And they’re involved somehow in a scheme to smuggle nuclear weapons out of Russia.
A FOURTH CASE RICH IN DRAMATIC POSSIBILITIES
The fourth case is a locked-room mystery. Every one of the four cases might merit a book of its own. But the fourth is especially rich in possibilities.
Inspectors Emil Karpo and Elena Timofeyeva accompany a team from the tax police on a massive raid. When they crash into the home of a suspect as reporters look on, they discover a cavernous, warehouse-like room with shelves stretching almost two stories high. Every shelf is groaning from the weight of priceless antiques from the time of the Tsars. Paintings. Religious icons. Books. Jewelry. Serving dishes. Old microscopes. Manuscripts. Karpo is convinced the horde is worth billions. And presiding over the treasure is an old woman, the sister of the man, now deceased, who’d bought up all these precious objects over many decades.
The tax police leave guards at both the front and back doors, pledging to return in the morning with experts to evaluate and catalog the treasure. But when they do, they’re far from alone. Cops from two different police districts have crowded in, claiming jurisdiction and determined to get a piece of the action. Thus, four different police units are on the scene, each claiming jurisdiction. Confusion abounds because the police “reform” introduced by Yeltsin’s government had left the boundaries loosely defined. Unfortunately, everything in the room has vanished. The old woman says she burned it all. And she won’t say another word until they all leave.
ENTER THE FBI
Somehow, Inspector Rostnikov and his lead detectives—Emil Karpo, Sasha Teach, Elena Timofeyeva—need to tackle all these cases simultaneously. But Colonel Snitkonoy has a surprise in store for them. At their regular morning meeting, he introduces Craig Hamilton, an FBI Special Agent attached to the US Embassy. He’s been sent to Russia to pursue an investigation into the smuggling of nuclear weapons—and it’s he, not Inspector Rostnikov, who will head that case, working with Rostnikov himself. Which means that Rostnikov must reshuffle his team’s assignments. It’s a wonder how everything could possibly work out well. But we know it will.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In the New York Times obituary for Stuart Kaminsky—he died at the age of seventy-five in 2009—Margalit Fox described him as “widely known for his prodigious output, complex characters and rich evocations of time and place.” In his career as a novelist beginning in 1977, he wrote more than sixty crime novels, usually at the rate of two per year. He produced four series, including the longest-running one about Toby Peters, a private detective in 1940s Hollywood, as well as the sixteen books of the Porfiry Rostnikov series. He was nominated for the Edgar Award seven times and won it once, for the Inspector Rostnikov novel, A Cold Red Sunrise.
February 12, 2024
It's a crime novel, yes. But is it a mystery? Rostnikov and his crew are sent out to investigate a number of crimes: the theft of a huge collection of antiquities, the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman, a shootout between rival mafias, a drunk man beaten and killed by... children? In almost every case, the crime is solved, not by the celebrated mind of Rostnikov, but by a combination of luck, guesswork and, in one case, by the victim of the crime himself.
Still a great tale, with fascinating characters, but if you're reading to try and figure out the mystery before the detective does, this isn't the book for you.
Still a great tale, with fascinating characters, but if you're reading to try and figure out the mystery before the detective does, this isn't the book for you.
September 30, 2020
Karoo and the American
In this story, we get a longer look at Emil Karpo, and a visiting FBI agent. Plus you get to see the failure of the Russian legal system. As always, we get to enjoy Porfiry’s plight.
In this story, we get a longer look at Emil Karpo, and a visiting FBI agent. Plus you get to see the failure of the Russian legal system. As always, we get to enjoy Porfiry’s plight.
February 6, 2024
Another excellent entry in this series. 4 star instead of 5 due to lack of a sense of closure at the end which I can understand but didn't enjoy... One of the bleaker volumes but very well written and plotted. The production crew of Slow Horses should get ahold of this series and run with it!
March 17, 2018
Keeps getting better... story, characters, environment.
June 3, 2019
I have been reading this series in order. The books keep getting better and better. This was the best one yet. I would highly recommend this series to people who enjoy a good mystery series.
August 6, 2020
Love the Russian outlook of life, this poor battered honesty Chief Inspector and the rest of his team, and his family.
May 4, 2021
Another great Rostnikov and Company story.
November 23, 2021
A quality installment in the larger universe of this story, but not the best way to enter the series.
May 19, 2022
Love this series.
October 28, 2022
O Inspector Rosnikov continua as suas investigações, com equipa habitual. Desta feita, os investigadores dividem se entre um rapto, um homicídio e um furto.
August 23, 2019
Rostniko is almost as interesting as Gabriel Allon. Smart, kind, very good at his job.
February 17, 2013
Readable, but miserable. Dated now - yes, there are computers in Russia, call phones exist as well and although there may still be organized crime, I suspect not too many folks lament the loss of communism.
I guess as a period piece, it is OK, I see that is a part of a series of stories about these folks, so many things are left unresolved in a gratuitous set-up for the next installment. I can't say though that I care enough to make sure Sasha is safe, Alexei doesn't lose all or Elena and Iosef get together.
I'm shocked by the relatively high rating.
I guess as a period piece, it is OK, I see that is a part of a series of stories about these folks, so many things are left unresolved in a gratuitous set-up for the next installment. I can't say though that I care enough to make sure Sasha is safe, Alexei doesn't lose all or Elena and Iosef get together.
I'm shocked by the relatively high rating.
August 5, 2014
Good fun holiday read. I hope Kaminsky know Russia as well as he seems to because this was very convincing. I loved the characterization and background - the portrait of a society in freefall as it was in the early 90's. Rostnikov is a very appealing hero. This is basically a police procedural. And what do you know - references to Ed MacBain who I also read for the first time this holiday. An absorbing read.
July 20, 2016
We seem to hope that justice will prevail, but once again Porfiry and his inspectors find that in this new Russia law and order are only words, as rubles out weighs justice. A good set of cases, little good comes from trying to do what should be considered right. Leaves a sorry image of a country trying to evolve, but most likely true.
June 10, 2022
One of a series of novels by Stuart Kaminsky involving police in Moscow. This has a unit of detectives investigating four different crimes in a changing socio-political landscape in Russia. The book is very readable and the characters are interesting. In a series that I like a great deal, this is one of the better stories in that series.
June 20, 2012
i'm not quite sure why i finished this. for an author who has a bunch of blurbs about how rich his characters are, i found them all quite wooden and/or inscrutable. meh.
May 31, 2016
I love Kaminsky in general but this story was disappointing. The plot was ok but characters were hard to care about. There are other Inspector Rostnikov novels in his collection that are better.
May 21, 2011
Interestng concept--police procedural in post-Soviet Moscow.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews