I love mysteries and police procedurals, especially those that take place in unlikely places or times. One of my favorites, the relatively unheralded Monkey House by John Fullerton, sets a murder mystery against the backdrop of war torn Sarajevo. The description of the details of life in a city torn by war and ethnic strife are actually more fascinating than the mystery itself, and, in fact, by comparison, make the murder being investigated seem insignificant.
Now I have discovered Olen Steinhauer’s Bridge of Sighs, which takes place in an unnamed Eastern European country (think Yugoslavia or Romania) in the chaos just after World War II. The country is ruled by a Soviet puppet and liberating Russian soldiers still crowd the streets along with the rubble of “liberation.” Loyalties are tenuous and complicated, and treachery and betrayal over everyday necessities is common. Food and housing are scarce. The country is in a difficult transition period between two occupations—the Nazis who have been defeated, and Soviet Russia, who is spreading its tentacles across Eastern Europe.
Young Emil Brod, just 22 years old, joins the People’s Militia, which is what the police are now called in this new Soviet satellite country. No one wants him there and he is given an impossible murder case, a case no one wants to solve, because finding out what really happened might be more terrible than not knowing. Again, the details of what it was like to live in this place and time drive the plot, as in this remark from a Polish woman from the city of Brest that Emil is questioning. When she denies she is Polish, he points out that Brest is in Poland. She replies, “For a long time, yes. Then one day it wasn’t. When the war was over someone told us we were living in Belarus… We live here now and that’s what matters.”
This is the beginning of a series of five, (Confession, 36 Yalta Boulevard, Liberation Movements, Victory Square in that order) featuring different detectives in the same People’s Militia. I am looking forward to finding out if the quality can be sustained to the end.
Submitted by Jane Brown.