THE STOLEN HEART : THE KYIV MYSTERIES PB

"Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it's hard to understand why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime. But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to ""reinforce"" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best. Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancee Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out. And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it's no wonder the ""meat case"" takes a back seat. But it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson's fate lies - and Nadezhda's too, for the two are inextricably entwined. Translated from the Russian by Boris Drayluk Reviews for The Silver Bone - Longlisted for the International Booker Prize ""Andrey Kurkov is often called Ukraine's greatest living writer, and it is a gift for crime fiction fans that he writes in this genre"" New York Times ""Wildly enjoyable . . . A glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux . . . I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more"" Guardian"