Tarnished Icons, Stuart M. Kaminsky
Tarnished Icons, Stuart M. Kaminsky
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Tarnished Icons

Author: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Narrator: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Unabridged: 10 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/14/2021


Synopsis

In the Edgar Award–winning crime series featuring a veteran Moscow cop, "Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

During the widespread corruption of the Yeltsin era, violent crime has risen in Moscow by 200 to 300 percent, keeping Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his team at the Office of Special Investigation busier than ever. So it's fortunate that having his bad leg amputated six months ago and replaced by a prosthetic limb has not slowed down the veteran Moscow cop one bit.

Now he's investigating a hate-fueled crime wave, as a bloodthirsty gunman wages a campaign to systematically exterminate the city's Jews. At the same time, a knife-wielding rapist is running rampant. Despite the urgent demand to end the mayhem, the inspector finds himself most intrigued by a centuries-old mystery concerning a murdered baroness and a priceless golden wolf statue that has been missing since 1862.

Stuart Kaminsky's long-running, Edgar Award–winning series has seen his intensely moral Moscow police inspector through the turbulence of several regimes, and always "Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core" (The New York Times).

About Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema-two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life's work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood's Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life.

Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as "the anti-Philip Marlowe." In 1981's Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009.


Reviews

Very happy I decided to try this series - maybe not the brightest move to start at volume 11, but I don't regret it. Excellent writing and characters - the story takes place in modern Moscow and in a setting that is as interesting as it is depressing and sad. Despite this people get by. There are so......more

3rd book of this series I've read and it is miles above most formulaic mystery series. Love the characters and setting. Thoroughly enjoyed!......more

Goodreads review by Alan

Stuart Kaminsky, with this installment in the Rostinkov series, begins linking the volumes closer together. The previous book saw Karpo lose his lover and Rostinkov build a friendship with FBI agent Craig Hamilton. Hamilton makes a reappearance in this volume, and one in a way I had not expected. Ros......more

Goodreads review by Mal

A BRILLIANT POLICE PROCEDURAL SET IN 1996 MOSCOW As a history buff, I turn to historical fiction with relish. And even though I’m familiar with Soviet and later Russian history, I find that the Stuart Kaminsky mystery novels invariably bring me new information and new insight. His series of Inspector......more