This book is small but perfectly formed. What it manages to convey between the covers through its intense detail and language is quite inspiring. The history, the characters and the atmosphere are haunting.
This book is small but perfectly formed. What it manages to convey between the covers through its intense detail and use of language is quite inspiring. The history, the characters and the atmosphere are haunting. This book needs to be read slowly to enable you to appreciate the use of language and the detail in the story. The characters are all quite complex and believable, but at its heart is a really good and compelling story. It brings home the reality of what life must have been like and still is like for those living in the shadow of Russia.
An exciting and gripping novel and fascinating to experience it from the perspective of the ‘other’ side.
This is a book about a number of characters who have taken the wrong path. One could have been using his technical abilities to help humanity and to save life but the medical emblems on his coat are a deceit. Instead, he and his colleagues chose to destroy and to practice the art of concealed death.
It covers a highly relevant subject given the high-profile Russian poisonings of dissidents and defectors over recent years but from the perspective of someone involved and complicit in the practice of assassination.
Very cleverly, the author draws us into some aspects of the psyche of the perpetrators introducing an insight into their perspective on life which if not sympathetic, enables us to experience their anxieties and frustrations as the story unfolds. These are not mindless automatons dedicated to some post-Soviet cause. They have thoughts and regrets just like anyone else but these people are tainted by their tradecraft. They acknowledge their lack of morality and have come to accept it. They have taken extreme risks, even with their loved ones but they carry on along a morally questionable line almost as if it is their fate.
It is a fast-moving tale, full of clear descriptions of life both from the Soviet past and of a present-day journey from east to west, culminating in an inevitable climax. An exciting and gripping novel and fascinating to experience it from the perspective of the ‘other’ side.
An uncomfortable but worthwhile read that needs your full attention.
You have to be in the mood to read some novels and Untraceable is certainly one of them. In these difficult times this novel about poisons and assassinations was a little hard to get to grips with but once I got into it, it began to move along.
And I’m glad I persevered. It’s very well researched and translated and although I found it challenging, the idea of an untraceable poison and the scientists obsession about not stopping until he had succeeded in creating it is well executed. Of course, there is the other side of the coin too. When things go wrong the state needs to find and destroy the source and so Untraceable follow the men who have to find the scientist who has defected.
Would I recommend it? Yes, with a caveat to keep going. The insights you gain are enlightening and although it is a work of fiction, one can imagine that it’s not a million miles from the truth.
Inspired, it appears, by the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury in 2018 this book rather confirms fears of how Russia operated in it’s recent past, and disturbingly through to the present.
Inspired, it appears, by the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury in 2018 this book rather confirms fears of how Russia operated in it’s recent past, and disturbingly through to the present.
One of it’s main characters is a leading chemist whose life has been obsessed with creating a deadly, untraceable poison. Many lives have already taken, both animal and human, in his experiments. He defects to the west when the USSR breaks up taking a sample of his poison with him. He longs to carry on with his deadly work but no-one wants him in a lab anymore.
The other main character is a war-damaged special forces operative who is sent to assassinate the chemist with his own type of poison.
The plot however seems secondary to the interest the author has in the history and minds of the characters. Not an easy book to read therefore in some ways but one that brings sharply in focus the secrecy and fear still embedded in the countries we used to call “behind the iron curtain” !