Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu

A serial killer is roaming Romania, cutting his victims’ throats with a sword. All his victims have two things in common: they’re from the much-maligned Roma community, an ethnic group that has suffered much prejudice and continues to do so, and they’re all criminals. Sword, as the press unimaginatively dub the killer, soon polarises the country, with some ethnic Romanians cheering the killer's targeting of Roma. Soon, the country’s ethnic divisions are laid bare.

This is a novel with a huge cast of characters and a huge span: the narrative stretches from Sword’s victims, through the police who are tasked with catching him, the intelligence agencies who monitor the simmering ethnic tensions and the national security situation that this endangers, politicians of all stripes who use the murders to jostle for position, and finally to the President, Prime Minister and cabinet ministers.

This is much more than a crime novel and is rather a political and social commentary, the Sword killings a catalyst through which to study the rifts that lie at the heart of Romanian society. The author is a former Romanian journalist himself and even served as Acting Minister in the nation’s Department of Public Information from  1996 to 1997. So he knows a thing or two about Romanian society and the picture that he paints is not a complimentary one. Quite the reverse, in fact. 

This book is eye-opening as to the sheer corruption that it paints. Journalists and television hosts actively seek pay-offs for portraying politicians in a good light, something that the latter are all too happy to oblige them with. If a media figure then doesn’t pull the line, the politician bitterly complains and seeks revenge. Racial tensions are stark also. While poverty and the sense that since the fall of communism the country has ground to a halt as far as progress and living standards are concerned is palpable.

This book works well on these levels but unfortunately, it tries to say too much and the narrative buckles under the weight of its cast of characters, all of whom struggle for the limelight. As for Sword him or herself? The serial killer disappears from the story for much of the book, and while on one level this doesn’t matter, the serial killings are just the spark to light the touch paper of tension, after all, one can't escape the fact that it’s precisely when the killer leaves the picture that the book starts to drift.

3 out of 5 stars