Vil Lipatov

Soviet literary orthodoxy pretty-well obviated the whole notion of mystery-writing as it's underdtood in the West. This book has the strange feel of a attempt to satisfy public curiosity about that "decadent" Western genre with something securely within the bounds of sotsrealism/. It doesn't really work, not leastwise as there's not much suspense, and the principal character is a sttolid hybrid of Nero Wolfe and Goncharov's Oblomov.