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Review by James Neal Webb
Thirty pages into Donald James' "Monstrum," I was prepared to be disappointed.
I've read some real losers lately (which shall go unnamed), with big advertising budgets, eye-catching covers, movie contracts, and best of all, good premises. They all fell flat on their faces due to lazy plotting, trite dialogue, weak characterization or plain bad writing. "Monstrum" begins with a string of incredible opening coincidences, which had me lifting an eyebrow. But patience is rewarded here: despite this opening, James crafts an excellent novel, washing out the incongruities in the brightness of plot, prose and character.
"Monstrum" is set in early twenty-first-century Russia, a country reeling from the aftermath of a recently ended civil war. On the streets of Moscow a killer runs loose -- a depraved maniac whose work resembles that of Jack the Ripper, whose bloody trail numbers three dead, though there may be many more. Appointed to solve this crime is police Inspector Constantin Vadim. A rural burglary detective, Vadim is the wrong man for the job, and the real reason for his presence in Moscow is secret.
With a little make-up, a mustache and an affected limp, he is a double for Koba, the vice-president of Russia's newborn democracy and heir apparent to his elderly, ailing superior. Vadim's ex-wife, a popular and telegenic division commander of an all-woman's corps in the opposition, is on the run following the end of the war, and seeks the help of her reluctant and bitter ex-husband. Thus, Vadim must solve a murder without knowing how, impersonate a celebrated politician, and keep the government he supports from finding the enemy he still loves all at the same time. See what I mean? It's no wonder he drinks.
Apart from the shenanigans James has to pull off in order to make this work -- and he does so with remarkable facility -- what impressed me most about "Monstrum" was its ability to surprise me, and it did so both in large and small ways. One example: when Vadim is first posted to the Moscow homicide bureau, he takes an immediate dislike to Ilya Dronsky, his second in command, and vice versa. Think you know what happens next? Guess again. The only thing I found hard to believe was the consumption of alcohol. Do Russians really drink that much?
"Monstrum" is full of memorable characters and jaw-dropping plot twists; it's a well-written book in a year of pretenders. A killer thriller.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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