Eye of the Red Tsar

Sam Eastland's Eye of the Red Tsar runs into many of the problems that plague historical thrillers. Its plot is much too dependent on coincidence, even when the coincidences in question defy all rational explanation. It's a historical thriller, but the coincidences don't have the ring of historical truth.

It also lacks emotional truth, as when we are asked to believe that the Tsar's chief detective and right hand man would willingly take on much the same role for Stalin himself, even after experiencing the worst of the Gulag. Pekkela, the detective, experiences the worst excesses of the Soviet regime, yet he willingly agrees to become a part of it. And being Stalin's chief detective, well...that's like being Stalin's chief detective--neither a resume builder nor a great career move, one would think. It's hard to imagine what he thinks will happen to the "criminals" he apprehends--he doesn't seem to care to ask the question. Maybe it's because I know too much about what happened to too many people falsely accused and punished under Stalin's brutal reign, but the notion of becoming Stalin's right hand man is...unpleasant. The fact that he accepts the job--when he could go anywhere else in the world--with so little thought makes me deeply suspicious of Pekkela, who is supposed to appear in a second novel in 2011. For Eastland's sake, I hope he finds a way to give his main character some kind of moral compass.