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LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
by Olen Steinhauer
St Martin's Minotaur, August 2006
304 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312332041


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

When I read Olen Steinhauer's first novel, THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, back in 2004, I was impressed by his ability to evoke the atmosphere of Eastern Europe. He was nominated for an Edgar for Best First that year, and, in my opinion, he deserved to win it. Now his fourth in the series has just been published, and it's clear that his command of the thriller is stronger than ever.

LIBERATION MOVEMENTS opens with a short chapter about Peter Husak, a Czech student. The Prague Spring of 1968 has given way to summer and now the Russian army occupies the city, crushing the national liberation movement with its tanks. Peter, we learn, has just attempted an escape to Hungary with two other students in the hope that once they are on the other side of the border they can bring the world's attention to the events unfolding in Prague. Both of Peter's companions are gunned down and he is arrested and interrogated before they can escape.

Although the time periods are out of synch, Peter's story is told in parallel with that of the series character, Brano Sev. The year is now 1975, and Sev has become Minister of State Security in an unnamed Easter European country. Together with his two subordinates, Gavra Noukas, a closeted gay man newly recruited into the secret police, and Katja Drdova, a young homicide inspector, he is investigating the mid-air explosion of a hijacked passenger jet on its way to Istanbul.

Before the explosion, the hijackers identified themselves as members of the Army of the Liberation of Armenia, but the plane exploded before they had a chance to make any demands. The investigators struggle to make sense out of the tragedy and discover that there may be links between the Armenians and a group called the Red Army Faction.

To complicate matters still further, Libarid Terzian, a colleague of Katja's, was on the plane on his way to an international conference. Because Libarid was of Armenian ancestry, he can't be ruled out as a possible participant in the hijack plot.

Katja uncovers a message left at the team's hotel in Istanbul by a woman named Zrinka Martrich. When they try to find out more about this mysterious informant, they discover that Zrinka is literally a woman without any history. They are told that Zrinka was in a sanatorium for the mentally ill for most of her life, but when they check they find that the sanatorium she supposedly inhabited was shut down long before she could have been there.

Sev provides information to his investigators, but only in the tiniest of bits. It's clear that he knows a great deal more than he's willing to share and that the trail of these crumbs leads to dark secrets within the government.

Steinhauer tells his story through alternating timelines, multiple points of view and fractured chronology. The writing is tight, intriguing and dripping with irony. The conclusion is the best kind, inevitable. And, far from tying up all the loose ends, the world is an even messier place after the weird justice is meted out than it was a moment after the airliner exploded.

Character rules here. Each of these characters is a fully and completely realized human being. Each has a troubled past and secret problems that must be resolved before they can come to an understanding of the crimes they are investigating. Liberation is the theme at every level, from personal to political and from ethnic to international. Even the discontinuous narrative itself struggles for liberation from the straightjacket of the standard timeline.

LIBERATION MOVEMENTS is a story the demands much of its readers, but the deep sense of artistic integrity that lingers after the story ends is more than enough reward for any extra effort. Bravo!

Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, August 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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