At last a new crime series to get stuck into, and a page turner to boot.

Before the Revolution Inspector Pekkala was The Emerald Eye, the Tsar’s personal special investigator, a legend across the Empire. Now it is 1924 and it is the new Red Tsar, Stalin, who plucks Pekkala from a Siberian hell-hole and orders him to discover what actually happened to the Romanovs in 1917. It’s a simple and familiar set up in general and perhaps  even in particular: Man has to earn freedom by making deal with Devil. Devil turns out to have more holds than one on Man. Man is in danger from all sides. Man has to stay ahead of both game and Devil.

Eye Of The Red Tsar may be familiar but it is familiar for a reason. As well as the quality of the writing and the set-up, there are memeorable set-pieces aplenty. The execution of the Romanovs; a snow-bound labour camp deep in a Siberian forest; a couple of calustrophobic trips down a disused mine. Most memorable of all is perhaps a strange dreamlike journey through a fake idealised village being visited by foreign journalists, which is a great piece of research dragged from the archives and made real.

This Russia, yet to have the full horror of Stalin’s rule unleashed upon it, is nonetheless already the product of a failed revolution. Paranoia has already taken hold in the wake of the studied arbitrariness of rule by fear. Nobody wants to talk to anybody. The oppressors are as scared of the regime of those they oppress. This is going to be fruitful territory for a crime series, which promises to become the equivalent of Phillip Kerr’s excellent Bernie Gunther series set inside Nazi Germany. Stories told from within the belly of a totalitarian beast are proving very popular these days. Because we see parallels, or because we see none I wonder?

Whatever Eye Of The Red Tsar is a guilt-free read and the first of a series that promises much. Robert Harris must be kicking himself, this is good middle-brow fun that will find a welcome home in many a holiday suitcase.

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