The blurb of this book reads: "Professor Kalitin is a ruthless, narcissistic chemist who has developed an untraceable, extremely lethal poison called Neophyte while working in a secret city on an island in the Russian far east. When the Soviet Union collapses, he defects and is given a new identity in Germany. After an unrelated Russian is murdered with Kalitin's poison, his cover is blown and he's drawn into the German investigation of the death. Two special forces killers with a lot of Chechen blood on their hands are sent to silence him – using his own undetectable poison. Their journey to their target is full of blunders, mishaps, holdups and accidents."
As someone who reads a lot of crime fiction and thrillers, and someone who is very interested in politics and current affairs, I really, really, really wanted to like this book. It sounded perfect for me. Unfortunately though, I just couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s the translation or just the author wanted to write in a literary style, but I found this book plodding and dull. I’m perfectly happy for characters to self-reflect, but here the self-reflections go on for pages and pages and pages. What promised to be a great story was weighed down and saggy.
2 out of 5 stars
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