For those who don't know this book was set in Stalins Soviet Union where to the outsider at least life was perfect, there was no crime and the State was everything. To those on the inside life was very different. Unable to trust anyone, even family members, citizens lived in constant fear of the 4 am knock on the door from the secret police who would remove a person for being a traitor to the revolution. Reasons were never given why and the person was more often than not never seen again, tortured to death or sent to work the last of their days in a Gulag. So what happens when a crime, murder no less, occurs? How can you investigate a crime in a Country that refuses to acknowledge they occur? I enjoyed reading about Russia during this period. One member in particular commented she was very interested to read about it as she had been taken in at the time Stalin was ruler and how different the global image was to the reality was shocking. The book was very brutal - the killer m...