36 Yalta Boulevard: A Novel

by Olen Steinhauer Narrated by Yuri Rasovsky

Overview

Olen Steinhauer's first two novels, The Bridge of Sighs and The Confession, launched an acclaimed literary crime series set in post-World War II Eastern Europe. Now he takes his dynamic cast of characters into the shadowy political climate of the 1960s. State Security Officer Brano Sev's job is to do what his superiors ask, no matter what-even if that means leaving his post to work the assembly line in a factory, fitting electrical wires into gauges. So when he gets a directive from his old bosses-the intimidating men above him at the Ministry of State Security, collectively known for the address of their headquarters on Yalta Boulevard, a windowless building consisting of blind offices and dark cells-he follows orders.

This time he is to resume his job in State Security and travel to the village of his birth in order to interrogate a potential defector. But when a villager turns up dead shortly after he arrives, Brano is framed for the murder. Trusting his superiors once again, he assumes this is part of their plan and allows it to run its course, a decision that leads him into exile in Vienna, where he finally begins to ask questions.

The answers in 36 Yalta Boulevard, Olen Steinhauer's tour de force political thriller, teach Comrade Brano Sev that loyalty to the cause might be the biggest crime of all.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Did Brano Sev, an agent of an unnamed Eastern European country, kill Bertrand Richter in Vienna in the 1960s? Or was he set up by his superiors at the Ministry of State Security, the headquarters of his service located at the address that gives Edgar-finalist Steinhauer's uneven third novel its title? And why does he have a slip of paper with the name Dijana Frankovic on it when he wakes up, bewildered, in a Vienna park? Even Sev doesn't know-amnesia!-but the consequences are all too clear: he's demoted to a dead-end factory job, "fitting electrical wires into gauges so that the machines of socialist agriculture would never fail." (The author ably captures socialist rhetoric.) Sev gets a chance at redemption, and the opportunity to find out what really happened, when the ministry sends him home, to the provincial town of B brka, to investigate a possible double agent, Jan Soroka. While the details of life behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War ring true, some readers may find the flawed Sev too undeveloped a character to care about his fate. The real story involves Sev's father, who left the country under suspicion of collaboration after WWII, but the plot's Byzantine complexity, more confusing than intriguing, clouds that classic father-son drama. Agent, Matt Williams at the Gernert Company. Author tour. (June 13) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

At the height of the Cold War in 1966, things have gone badly for Brano Sev, a major in the Ministry of State Security in an Eastern Bloc country. Sent to Vienna to plug a leak, Sev is accused of sabotaging the mission and soon finds himself back home working in a factory, lucky to have avoided prison. Five months later, his former boss, Col. Laszlo Cerny, shows up with an offer: check out a defector who has returned to B brka, an isolated village north of the capital, where Sev was born and still has family, and he may earn reinstatement. Thus begins a quest for the truth behind a series of baffling events on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Aware that he is being used but unable to figure out for what purpose, Sev finds that not only is his fate at stake but also that of his country. Steinhauer (The Confession) is a master at entangling a compelling protagonist in a spellbinding web where each broken thread entraps the character (and the reader) in yet another mystery. This is an imaginative, brilliantly plotted espionage thriller, with finely detailed settings and a protagonist of marvelous complexity. Highly recommended. [See Mystery Prepub, LJ 2/1/05.]-Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Eastern Europe in the late '60s: a dismal time, a dreary thriller. Major Brano Sev is a State Security Officer in the People's Militia of a down-trodden, never-named USSR satellite. Actually, he's a spy, a very good spy. Clever, courageous, durable: coping with corporal punishment unstintingly administered is one of his noteworthy attributes. In addition, he likes to think of himself as unswervingly loyal to the socialist idea, but in this he's about to be severely tested. As the story opens, Brano is in Vienna on a secret assignment-a secret to him, too, it turns out, since a whack on the head has induced temporary amnesia. At about the time he fully recovers his memory, Brano discovers what it means to be an apparatchik in a political party paralyzed by paranoia, a party with a single item on its agenda: survival. After being framed and denounced by an ambitious colleague, he's stripped of his rank and consigned to scut work ("the third man down the assembly line") at a factory making agricultural machinery. Though ever stoical, Brano acknowledges relief when Comrade Colonel Laszlo Cerny appears with an assignment that could lead to rehabilitation. He's to go to B-brka, his hometown, to check out the dubious behavior of one Jan Seroka, a fellow native son. On the face of it, the mission seems straightforward enough, but Brano-loyalty now leavened by recent experience-suspects that treachery has become reflexive among his Politburo peers. He's right, and once again he's framed, this time for murder. Other betrayals follow until at length Brano is forced to conclude that his most trusted friends are indistinguishable from his bitterest enemies. Steinhauer, who's done excellent work in twoprior suspensers (The Confession, 2004, etc.), misses here: this time out, he confronts the reader with the formidable task of empathizing with an essentially colorless protagonist. Author tour

From the Publisher

[Steinhauer's] people are real, the crimes genuine, and he is telling larger truths about that era, making it unusually accessible.” —David Halberstam, LA Times

“A brainy thriller motored by stylishness and brevity. Steinhauer evokes the baroque, bureaucratic nature of the Ministry without choking his readers on it, and he can render it humorous without being satirical. His characters, too, are subtle and biting.” —Esquire

“Brano Sev is Steinhauer's most intriguing hero yet, and that's saying something….With its shifting perceptions, pervasive paranoia, and truly unpredictable plot, this will be savored by readers of well-crafted espionage ranging from Alan Furst to John le Carré.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Steinhauer is a master at entangling a compelling protagonist in a spellbinding web where each broken thread entraps the character (and the reader) in yet another mystery. This is an imaginative, brilliantly plotted espionage thriller, with finely detailed settings and a protagonist of marvelous complexity. Highly recommended.” —Washington Post Book World on The Confession

“A wonderfully taut tale that is part police procedural, part political thriller, part love story....Steinhauer has created a vivid world in a lost time.” —Washington Post Book World on The Confession

“A mesmerizing and richly atmospheric follow-up to his 2003 debut.” —Entertainment Weekly on The Confession

“The Confession is a clever reworking of the police procedural: The narrative-within-a-narrative exposes multiple levels of complicity and guilt that make this an affecting, sobering entry in one of the most inventive series around.” —Los Angeles Times on The Confession

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169603897
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/27/2005
Edition description:	Unabridged

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