Siberian Light Book

A man lies dead, sprawled in the bedroom of apartment #8.  Rock music blares as two militiamen follow the bloody trail upstairs. . . and into the quick, cold slice of a razor-edged blade.

The victim was a criminal.  But two honest cops were killed with him.  Gregori Nowek, mayor of the small Siberian town, is ordered to investigate.  Armed with only a few clues—a fragment of cloth, American bullets, an unidentified bone—Nowek is shocked when a prime suspect is named.

Dr.  Anna Vereskaya came to Siberia to study the endangered tiger.  Instead, she stumbled on the dangerous edge of a shocking conspiracy.  Gregori Nowek wants to believe in her innocence—just as he wants to believe in justice for his lawless town.  Searching for answers, Nowek is plunged into a terrifying race across the stark Siberian wilderness.  Here, betrayal is everywhere.  And here, a man, a woman, and a desperate, haunted land are joined together—as a staggering truth is uncovered on the world's last frontier.

Publishers Weekly

Like Donald James's Monstrum (Forecasts, June 30), White's atmospheric but cluttered new thriller (after The Last High Ground, 1995) makes the most of a latter-day Russian setting as it depicts a desperate official's pursuit of a wanton killer. Here, the crisply depicted landscape isn't Moscow but Siberia, where Gregori Nowek, mayor of Morkovo and a rare man of honor in a ragged town ruled by mafiyas and corrupt politicians, vows to find whoever sliced dead not only a local fat cat but also the two militia men who discovered his body. A patch of orange cloth found near the bodies points to AmerRus, an American company allegedly working nearby oil deposits. But Nowek's visit to the company's fields, and an animal bone also found at the crime scene, indicate that AmerRus may be interested not in oil but tigers, worth a fortune on the black market. The further Nowek digs, the deeper he steps into trouble as those profiting from AmerRus's real reason for being in Siberia aim to foil him, fatally if necessary. His personal troubles also mount, as he falls for the female scientist framed as the chief murder suspect, and as his wayward teenaged daughter is kidnapped and sexually tortured by an AmerRus employee. Outlandish plot turns like those, and the predictable action sequences that cap the narrative, undermine White's strong evocations of place and personthe novel bulges with characters who scrape the mind like sandpaper; but even so, readers will remember his bold portrait of Russia as a Byron of a land, beautiful but mad, bad and dangerous to know. $150,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.)