Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov

On the eve of a show trial, a Soviet dissident is stabbed through the heart On a frigid night in silent Moscow, Aleksander Granovsky paces the floor of his government flat. He has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system, and in two days he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. Granovsky is drafting a speech to deliver in court when an assassin appears and pierces his heart with the point of a rusty sickle.   The case falls in the lap of Porfiry Rostnikov, a Moscow police inspector whose three decades on the force have made him an expert in navigating the labyrinths of the Soviet bureaucracy. But it will take every ounce of Rostnikov's skill to find the killer and survive the investigation, as every question he asks takes him closer to the heart of the KGB.

A terrorist at the Moscow Film Festival plots an international incident Built in the twilight of the Tsarist state, Moscow's Metropole Hotel is a poignant reminder of the decadence of the last regime. But today its corridors are musty, its rooms are dank, and now its restaurant is the scene of a quadruple murder. Four men-one American, one Japanese, and two citizens of Mother Russia-share a meal of smoked salmon, caviar, and two bottles of vodka. In the morning, all are found dead, blood on their lips and faces contorted in pain.   To keep the killings under wraps, the Kremlin hands the investigation over to famously discreet police investigator Porfiry Rostnikov. A terrorist is targeting foreigners to embarrass the Soviet state, and the killer will happily sacrifice any Russian who gets in the way.

To salvage his career, Rostnikov takes on a baffling bathroom murder After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his wife. But just before the deal closes, Brezhnev's death sends the nation into turmoil, and dooms Rostnikov's escape. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders-the latest of which may lead somewhere very big indeed.   An elderly Jewish man has been shot to death in his bathtub, an incomprehensible killing committed in sight of his two children. And as a brutal Moscow summer wears on, the police themselves become outright targets for car thieves and snipers. With the help of his two faithful lieutenants, Karpo and Tkach, the limping detective will need to find a way to solve these cases and salvage his good name-if it doesn't cost him his life.

Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov fights to stop a vendetta against the acrobats of the Moscow circus A drunk perches atop the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov sighs. After years fighting to become a top detective, he has suffered a demotion to the minor crimes unit, which means the lunatic on the statue is his responsibility. But the limping policeman fails to talk the distraught man down, and with a perfect somersault, acrobat Valerian Duznetzov makes the last leap of his storied career.   Across town, Duznetzov's partner, Oleg, waits for him under the big top, practicing their trapeze routine high above the circus floor. After letting go of the bars and going into a perfect double flip, Oleg falls, realizing just before impact that the net was treacherously untied. As Rostnikov digs into this strange pair of deaths, he finds dark secrets inside the Moscow circus-secrets sure to grab the attention of his old friends at the KGB.

In trouble with the KGB, Rostnikov is sent to investigate a death in Siberia After three decades serving with the Moscow police, Porfiry Rostnikov is back at the bottom. When forced to choose between the law and the party line, he fights for justice-a disturbing preference that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have transferred him to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned with only the most token murders. But, peculiarly, Rostnikov's newest assignment is no token at all.   While in Siberia investigating the death of a dissident's daughter, a corrupt commissar is stabbed through the eye with an icicle. Finding his killer should be a top priority, yet the KGB hands it off to the disgraced detective. Someone doesn't want this murder solved, and there are people in Moscow who may be plotting to ensure Rostnikov does not live to see the end of this Siberian winter.

With his wife in the hospital, Porfiry Rostnikov tries to protect Moscow from chaos Porfiry and Sarah Rostnikov have been in love since the end of World War II, growing old together as the Soviet Union lurches towards modernity. Sarah is recovering from a brain operation, her police inspector husband at her side, when a bearlike man staggers into her hospital room. Hulking, naked, and insensible, he is about to leap out the window when Rostnikov talks him off the ledge. But before the orderlies take him away, the giant whispers a secret to the investigator. Someone has been stealing from the factory where he works.   As he puzzles over the colossal madman's clue, Rostnikov must also focus on his colleagues in the Moscow police, as their team contends with a sudden jump in crime. Rebels are planting bombs, teenagers are plotting assassinations, and the KGB lurks in every shadow. Surviving all this without Sarah by his side will be a challenge for the limping policeman, but he has long proven adept at talking down the Russian bear.

In the faltering Soviet Union, the KGB will do anything to hold on to power A Jewish man in a squalid government flat finds a killer in his shower. A young punk girl hurtles naked through the window of her apartment. And in the Crimea, at a health retreat for mid-level functionaries, an aging policeman's death is made to look like heart failure.   It's this last murder that catches Porfiry Rostnikov's attention. The inspector's wife is recovering from brain surgery, and his superiors at the Moscow police insist he accompany her to the Crimea. There he meets Georgi Vasilievich, a former colleague suffering from emphysema, a bad heart, and an inability to stop working. He is investigating a high-level conspiracy when he dies, and Rostnikov inherits the case, putting him on the trail of a gang of hardline security men who refuse to give up the Soviet dreamand who will go to murderous lengths to ensure that perestroika never comes to pass.

Just days after the end of the USSR, a mysterious priest becomes a martyr In service of his beloved Orthodox Church, Father Merhum has spent decades battling Soviet apparatchiks and the KGB. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and the aged priest makes plans to denounce Communist supporters, including some within the Church. He is on his way to Moscow when an assassin stops him with an ax. And as he dies, Merhum begs for forgivenessa curious plea from a saint-to-be.   The case falls to police inspectors Porfiry Rostnikov and Emil Karpoa ruthless detective whose eerie appearance has earned him the nickname the vampire." But as they dig into the past of this celebrated village priest, they uncover strange church secrets and a conspiracy that would ensure that though Soviet Russia is finished, corruption will never die.

As a serial killer terrorizes Moscow, Rostnikov gets an assignment in Havana The young girl leads her target into a park, planning on robbing him at knifepoint as soon as they are out of sight. But before she can strike, her quarry changes from a stooped middle-aged man to a feral beast, swinging a lead pipe with sadistic glee. By the time the police find the thief, her murderer is long gone.   He is the first serial killer in Russian history, responsible for at least forty deaths, and his exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. And as his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must depart for Havana, to investigate a Russian politician accused of murdering a young Cuban girl. The Russian people may have abandoned Communism, but for their man in Havana, this case will prove a trip down memory lane.

In post–Cold War Moscow, business is booming and crime pays Capitalism has come to Russia, and money is raining from the sky. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become oligarchs, and the brutal Russian mafia consolidates its power. In the center of this madness is police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a thoughtful detective who is struggling to adjust to life in these turbulent times.   A prominent businessman is kidnapped in broad daylight, minutes after finishing the paperwork to start his latest business venture. Three children, as innocent-looking as they are savage, terrorize a slum. And tax collectors discover a cache of historic Russian treasures dating to before the Revolution, but the trove vanishes overnight. As his country races into the future, the limping policeman will have to run to keep up.

Rostnikov uncovers a crime spree with roots in a long-lost Tsarist treasure Porfiry Rostnikov was just a boy when he lobbed a grenade at the Nazi tank, destroying the evil machine and his left leg with it. And after five decades' dragging his lame leg behind him, the police inspector decides to have the useless limb amputated. The Cold War is over, and as Russia learns to walk again, its finest policeman must do the same.   Meanwhile, a knife-wielding rapist known as the Silent One terrorizes the women of Moscow, and a bloodthirsty gunman begins a campaign to exterminate the city's Jews. And while investigating this hate-fueled crime wave, Rostnikov uncovers a mystery concerning a murdered baroness and a priceless wolf statue that has been missing since 1862. Moscow is on the verge of a bright new future, but the horrors of this ancient city's past may mean a return to the dark ages.

An international gang war chooses Moscow as its battlefield Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has adapted well to life without Communism. But under the Soviets, blood feuds were pursued in the dark halls of bureaucracy, and now they take place in the streets. An international drug ring has chosen Moscow as its next port of call, and the only thing standing in its way is the budding Russian mob, headed by a young man whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe.   As Rostnikov tries to stop an army of two-legged killers, his cohorts at the Moscow police department take on the four-legged variety. Dogfighting in Moscow is big business, and interests in this illegal sport stretch to the highest reaches of their corrupt department. In the new Moscow, death and profit go hand in hand.

Rostnikov confronts a mystery that stretches from Moscow to the stars Once, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin. But the Soviet Union is dead, and the days of Gagarin's glory are long passed. For the men and women aboard the decaying Mir space station, life is an unending series of near-disasters. During one such breakdown, cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka asks ground control to contact Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov if anything happens to him. And when Vladovka disappears a year after his safe return to Earth, Rostnikov is the only man who can find him.   A philosophical detective, Rostnikov has made a name for himself navigating the bureaucracies of the Kremlin. But never has he encountered anything like the labyrinth that is Star City, home of the Russian space program. Something has terrified the cosmonaut, and since he knows dangerous state secrets, he must be found, alive or dead. But if a man who braved outer space is scared, what chance does an earthbound detective have?

A century-old mystery takes Rostnikov halfway around the world In the waning days of the Russian Empire, the Czar inked a secret treaty with Japan that was stolen en route by one of the workmen on the Trans-Siberian Railway. More than a one hundred years later, the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Czardom, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is trying to find his way in the Russia of Vladimir Putin. A large amount of money is being sent from Odessa to Vladivostok to purchase a mysterious Czarist document, and Rostnikov's superior believes it may be this long-lost treaty. Eastbound ticket in hand, Rostnikov sets out to investigate.   Meanwhile, his subordinates in Moscow tackle a female Jack the Ripper and an anti-Semitic punk rocker whose mob connections may have gotten him kidnapped. It's a brave new world in western Russia, but where Rostnikov is going, the landscape hasn't changed in centuries.

A Whisper to the Living continues the adventures (some would say trials and tribulations) of Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union. Rostnikov is one of the most engaging and relevant characters in crime fiction, a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing Russia. Rostnikov and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a Moscow prostitution ring...and in doing so Rostnikov and his team uncover a chain of murders that lead to a source too high to be held accountable if the police want to keep their jobs. Or, their lives.