Framed as a letter to a woman he is going to marry, this book details a winter in the life of one lawyer in Moscow who falls into a crime that he suspects but does nothing about.

Published in 2011, this is a Moscow that is rife with corruption, crime and the moneyed making more money; little has changed. Citizens were given their flats when the end of communism happened and this was a gift for the scammers and criminals who could get their hands on to prime pieces of estate leaving the original owner homeless.

We see everything through Nicholas, the British lawyer’s eyes, where most of the time they were blinkered. On the metro one evening he saves a young woman, Masha, from having her handbag snatched and goes for a drink with her and her sister. He falls in love with her and this leads him blindly to do things he knew he shouldn’t which would end up removing an old woman from her home.

The loss of innocence

In spring as the snow starts to melt, sometimes bodies are discovered, known as snowdrops as they come out in the spring, and outside Nicholas’ flat there is one. It is the body of a man he half looked for when begged by a neighbour. It seems this man, too, was conned out of his flat with someone else moving in and so the loss of innocence is not just that of Nicholas but also of Russia in the move from the USSR to the present day.

Crime, business, politics, spookery – the usual Russian merry-go-round.

p80

Nicholas is unbelievably naive throughout the book until the end when he articulates what has happened. He allows love to colour the way he views events, always finding a positive or believable persuasion to them even when warned by the man he works for.

There are debauched nightclubs, shady men, one known as the Cossack, and a string of difficult taxi drivers which is the same the world over. But what is portrayed exteremely well is Moscow including the various stages of snow that you get throughout the winter and then during the thaw.

What is the genre of this book?

Written by a journalist who spent three years in Moscow it is no wonder that elements of the book are very good but this is not a psychological drama nor a chilling love story as billed. It is the story of con artists and a man who wanted to believe in them because they were beautiful who then tries to explain himself away to his bride to be.

I am not sure I would marry him after this.