Book Review: 36 Yalta Boulevard

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

36 Yalta Boulevard     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Olen Steinhauer
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Espionage   Thriller
St. Martin’s Minotaur; $31.95 hardcover; 308 pages

State security officer Brano Sev has been attached to the capital’s People’s Militia office for more than 20 years. After a disastrous operation in Vienna, though, he’s sent to work on the assembly line of a factory. Despite the dullness of his job and the frustration, he follows orders as he has always done. And he follows orders again when after 6 months on the factory floor, he gets a message from his old bosses at 36 Yalta Boulevard, the state security headquarters. He’s dispatched to his home village to spy on a potential defector and his family.

Sev isn’t in town very long before a villager turns up dead, and he’s framed for the murder. Undaunted, Sev continues to follow his orders, to the extent of going into exile in Vienna. Only then does he begin to question his superiors.

36 Yalta Boulevard is an excellent addition to Steinhauer’s stellar series. I’ve loved these books from the very beginning. They’re stylish thrillers in the classic mode, but they have a modern psychological understanding as well. This one follows Brano Sev, who appears in both previous books, in 1967, at the height of the Cold War.

Steinhauer’s novel is a true spy thriller, the sort you don’t see anymore. It’s almost a throwback to that classic era of Eric Ambler and John LeCarré. Yet at the same time, it toys with philosophy: what keeps a man faithful to his ideals, and what does it take to tear him from them?

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM