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Book: Left Out In The Cold - 'Liberation Movements: A Novel' By Olen

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  • Book: Left Out In The Cold - 'Liberation Movements: A Novel' By Olen

    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
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