In trouble with the KGB, Rostnikov is sent to investigate a death in Siberia. After three decades serving with the Moscow police, Porfiry Rostnikov is back at the bottom. When forced to choose between the law and the party line, he fights for justice - a disturbing preference that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have transferred him to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned with only the most token murders. But, peculiarly, Rostnikov's newest assignment is no token at all. While in Siberia investigating the death of a dissident's daughter, a corrupt commissar is stabbed through the eye with an icicle. Finding his killer should be a top priority, yet the KGB hands it off to the disgraced detective. Someone doesn't want this murder solved, and there are people in Moscow who may be plotting to ensure Rostnikov does not live to see the end of this Siberian winter. About the Author.Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema - two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life's work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood's Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life. Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as the anti-Philip Marlowe. In 1981's Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009. Review quote.Impressive. . . . Kaminsky has staked a claim to a piece of the Russian turf. . . . He captures the Russian scene and characters in rich detail. - The Washington Post Book World. Quite simply the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko in Gorky Park. - The San Francisco Examiner. Stuart Kaminsky's Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written. - The San Diego Union-Tribune.
