In A.K. Shevchenko’s debut novel, the fate of Europe could be drastically altered by the contents of one document – no, it’s not Stalin’s shopping list or Hitler’s letter to Santa Claus, it’s the will of a Cossack general whose audacious theft of treasure from the Tsar could have  repercussions for Russia, Ukraine and the UK well over a century later if it comes to light. This book is reminiscent of Robert Harris (though not perhaps at his best), and takes in settings as far apart as Argentina and the Ukraine, as our heroine, young London solicitor Kate, and our ambitious young Russian Security Service agent Tara Petrenko, criss-cross the globe pursuing their own agendas with regard to the will, with a number of historical flashbacks thrown in for good measure.

Opening with the revelation of the death of key character is a brave way to start the book, and Shevchenko’s occasional repetition of the opening paragaphs of chapters is a clever device that gives a nice echoing effect. The characters are pleasingly three-dimensional too: Kate is an average young woman living a slightly chaotic and unsatisfactory life, only involved because she happens to have Ukrainian ancestry; Petrenko starts out as a simple baddy, but is eventually revealed to be quite morally conflicted, more John Le Carre than Robert Ludlum.

The plot twists and turns, and may once in a while succeed in throwing you off the trail completely – so sharp wits are required to get the most out of Bequest. There are three narrative strands to keep hold of, with flashbacks and switchbacks, but any befuddlement I sometimes felt was offset by the flashes of insight in to the indignities and horrors that have been heaped on to the Ukraine for centuries by Russian Empire and Communist tyranny, and by a genuine sense of compulsion to keep turning the pages and see what happened next.

Bequest probably won’t win any awards, but as thrillers go it’s a cut above your average airport fare. It succeeds as an adventure story, as an amusing diversion, and a genuinely through-provoking insight in to the casual brutality of Stalin’s Soviet Union; it’s also genuinely well written, with well-crafted prose rather than the wince-inducing mangling of the English language that sometimes accompanies this type of exercise. The fact that its author wrote about her home country with a mixture of love and sadness makes Bequest well worth a read.

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