LEFT OUT IN THE COLD – ‘LIBERATION MOVEMENTS: A NOVEL’ BY OLEN STEINHAUER
By Paula L. Woods
The Los Angeles Times
Calendar Live
Nov 4 2006
Beginning with 2003’s "The Bridge of Sighs," Olen Steinhauer has
followed detectives from the People’s Militia as they’ve investigated
three decades’ worth of murders in a fictional Eastern Bloc country.
In the process, readers have been privy to the frustrations, betrayals
and backstabbing they’ve endured (and sometimes instigated). These
men include "Bridge’s" idealistic rookie Emil Brod’s investigation
of a songwriter’s murder, a doomed detective-novelist caught up in
1950s Soviet repression ("The Confession") and devious Brano Sev,
who does double duty as a spy for the country’s KGB-like Ministry of
State Security ("36 Yalta Boulevard"). Brano has always cast a pall
over the series, and his actions have driven the stories into morally
ambiguous territory, earning Steinhauer favorable comparisons with
Graham Greene, John le Carre and Alan Furst. Yet his novels retain
enough elements of classic detective mysteries so that he can, more
or less, keep a foot in both camps.
Now comes "Liberation Movements," which expands Steinhauer’s literary
landscape in a number of important ways. He juxtaposes two very
different locales and stories – that of Peter, a hapless student caught
trying to escape Czechoslovakia during the failed 1968 reform movement,
and the story of the explosion of a hijacked commercial airliner bound
for Istanbul, Turkey, in 1975. As if the dual story lines and locations
weren’t difficult enough to juggle, readers familiar with the series
will find that one of the militia squad’s members, Libarid Terzian,
is on that flight en route to an Interpol conference. The Armenian’s
presence on the plane raises intriguing questions: Is he a secret
sympathizer with the Army of the Liberation of Armenia, who hijack
the plane? Is it a coincidence that he encounters Zrinka Martrich,
who may or may not be a militiawoman but certainly seems to know more
about him than she should?
Seeking answers, Emil Brod, now head of the People’s Militia, sends
Brano Sev and his new partner, 29-year-old Gavra Noukas, to Istanbul
to investigate. Even though the case is not in their jurisdiction,
the two men decide that, since the hijackers boarded in their capital,
the best way to honor their comrade Terzian’s memory and fulfill their
duty is to reconstruct the hijackers’ last days in their homeland
and turn the information over to Turkish officials.
The combination of old spymaster and younger detective energizes a
series whose characters, on the job for almost 30 years, one feared
could be getting a little long in the tooth. Part of the charge comes
from the pair’s very different personalities – Brano is a cold,
calculating mentor while Gavra is a passionate man who is "always
falling victim to that word Brano enjoyed harping on – sentimentality.
" ‘It is,’ Brano had told him numerous times, ‘the demise of all good
operatives, resulting in the most fatalities. But you’re young. You
just don’t understand yet.’ " Another young addition to the militia
and integral part of the team is Katja Drdova, 24 and the only woman
in the unit. Driven by a tragedy in her early life, Katja is obsessed
with being successful and painfully aware of "the condescension from
[her] workmates." She too is mentored and manipulated by Brano in ways
too intricate to reveal here but diabolical and effective nonetheless.
"Liberation Movements" also goes beyond the tighter point of view
of the previous novels to give readers five different perspectives,
three of them from the militia plus the young woman Zrinka, who plays
a pivotal, if incredible, role in the action. But Steinhauer saves
some of the most unsettling chapters for Ludvik Mas, a ruthless yet
memorable character whose tradecraft and surprising connections to
the events of 1968 as well as to Brano, Katja and even Zrinka are
doled out in deliciously suspenseful doses.
Beyond the expanded relationships of these principal characters,
Steinhauer does a good job of evoking Istanbul’s bars and bazaars,
hotels and churches, which form the backdrop for the team’s search for
the men who set the hijacking in motion. He also provides just enough
background information on the genocide of a multitude of Armenians by
the Turkish militia in 1915 to understand why the crimes still feel
so personal to these young terrorists more than 60 years later –
and why they could spur the real-life assassination of two Turkish
consuls by an Armenian American in Santa Barbara in 1975.
And the echoes Steinhauer creates between the motives of terrorist
groups like the fictional Army of the Liberation of Armenia, the
real-life Red Army Faction and others of that day (and, by extension,
those of our own) are unexpectedly chilling. Perhaps it is, as one
character says, that "[t]he political, in fact, is really only the
personal dressed up in more flamboyant clothes."
With its plots and counterplots, secret identities and tradecraft taken
straight from the Soviet playbook of the day, "Liberation Movements"
is an entertaining, if sometimes implausible, read that should put
Steinhauer squarely in the front of the pack of today’s espionage
writers. And with complex, engaging characters like Gavra and Katja
carrying on the work of Emil, Libarid, Brano and the older hands,
it is an exhilarating and enjoyable ride.
Paula L. Woods is the author of the Charlotte Justice mystery series,
including "Strange Bedfellows."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
