Siberian Red [Format Kindle]

... of Tsar Nikolaj II???
Stalin's most trusted secret agent, the legendary Inspector Pekkala, is on his deadliest mission...

It is September 1939. With the Nazis fighting in Poland and planning to invade Russia, too, Stalin's need for a long overdue injection of money or gold - from whereever it may come - is greater than ever. The country is on the brink of bankruptcy. In exchange for his freedom, a prisoner in an isolated Siberian gulag offers to reveal the location where Colonel Kolchak, a man entrusted by the Tsar, has hidden tons of gold from the Bolsheviks.

When Stalin learns that the informant has been knifed to death, he summons his chief investigator, Pekkala, to the Kremlin and orders him to solve the murder.
Stalin also urgently needs to know the whereabouts of the legendary missing gold of Tsar Nicholas II.

For this task, Stalin chooses Pekkala because he was the former special investigator for the Tsar, known as the "Emerald Eye". To accomplish his mission, our hero will return to Siberia and must re-live the worst nightmare of his own past - where he was once a prisoner in the notorious Gulag known as Borodok.
To unravel the mystery, Pekkala poses as a prisoner, and re-enters the brutal place under an eternal layer of ice and snow, where pure desparation reigns...
He has to infiltrate a dangerous gang of convicts still loyal to the Tsar, who may know the whereabouts of the precious gold. He soon learns that the best-kept secrets are those that no one even knows exist...

In the meanwhile at Moscow his loyal co-operator and friend Major Kirov has to face his own difficulties, searching the long forgotten Archive 17 for traces that might be helpful for his boss. A very, very dangerous search...

An we will learn the real meaning of "Siberian Red"...

A novel of suspense with the superb historical research that distiguishes all his works - Sam Eastland gets always stronger.
A real gold mine for readers interested in the time of Stalin's reigh of fear and horror.
As a bonus we find at the end 11 pages telling the truth about the struggles for the domination of Siberia.

The series consists of four books now Eye of the Red Tsar, Red Coffin aka Shadow Pass: A Novel of Suspense, this book which came out also as Archive 17: A Novel of Suspense and the latest The Red Moth (Inspector Pekkala 4).
Let us hope for more!!!

Servant to the Tsar who has been reprieved by Stalin, Finnish Inspector Pekkala revisits some of his darker past when a murder takes place at the Borodok Gulag. The novel's format is similar to the two previous entries with Eastland leveraging flashbacks to pre-Soviet time. This allows the author to over credit the fictional Tsar with intelligence not given in actual history and to paint his interpretation of Stalin with some buffoonery. This plot involves murder, Tsarist treasure, White Russians, Czech soldiers of the former empire, and the impending Second World War. All of this should make the book move with speed, however, it was quite sluggish throughout.

Siberian Red also misses the Holmes and Watson entertainment and interchanges previously seen between Pekkala and his subordinate, Major Kirov. The latter has become a more interesting character especially as he holds his ground with Stalin. Overall, the series seriously deflated after the very first book as Pekkala's personal mysteriousness was sacrificed too quickly. Still I enjoy the period and have hope that Eastland places Pekkala and Kirov in some interesting situations as the World War Two rages...that has worked for Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther.

First of all, if you are looking at this book, be aware that SIBERIAN RED is the title of the edition sold in the United Kingdom and Canada, while the title of the book that is sold in the United States is ARCHIVE 17. Both are interesting titles, and I'll let you read the book and decide which you think is the more appropriate.

I very much enjoyed reading this book. It helps if you have an interest in Russia during the era of the Czar and Stalin. Make sure that you've read the first book in the series, EYE OF THE RED TSAR, which is a terrific read, with a lot of detail for those whose like that sort of thing. ARCHIVE 17 is a little different, using broader strokes and not taking its time quite the way the first (and second book, too) did. Instead, it is assumed you are already familiar with the good inspector and his side-kick (Kirov) as time becomes of the essence as we rush to the climax, and denouement. Stylistically, the book has gotten away from spending a lot of time in the past, which the first two books did. It was appropriate in the first two books, as that was key to laying the foundation to our knowing the inspector. With the third book, I suspect that Mr. Eastland decided it was time to break (though not completely) from that convention of bouncing between the Romanov past and Pekkala's present, under the service of Stalin. But in the rush to solve the crime(s), and see that karma is served, I think we also lost a little bit of seeing some of those things that made Inspector Pekkala exceptional. Instead, we got a little more excitement and a rush of events, but lost some of the detail and suspense. Maybe not the most apt comparison, but try this on for size... the writing of the first two books indulged in the nice kind of suspense and tension maybe reminiscent of a John le Carré novel, while this third might be more compared to the action novels of Alistair MacLean, which also isn't a bad position to be in. I'd be curious to know what others think, who have read the other books as well.