Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case – though it is mostly perplexing because it’s hard to understand why selling the meat of one’s own pig constitutes a crime.
But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to \”reinforce\” the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent – if diffident – best.
Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancee Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she’s carrying out. And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it’s no wonder the \”meat case\” takes a back seat.
But it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson’s fate lies – and Nadezhda’s too, for the two are inextricably entwined.
Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
Reviews for The Silver Bone – Longlisted for the International Booker Prize
\”Andrey Kurkov is often called Ukraine’s greatest living writer, and it is a gift for crime fiction fans that he writes in this genre\” New York Times
\”Wildly enjoyable . . . A glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux . . . I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more\” Guardian
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Imprint: MacLehose Press/Quercus
Publication date: 25/02/2025
Series: The Kyiv Mysteries v2
