Lieutenant Ramaz Donadze is like a detective in a Scottish police procedural or a Scandinavian noir, but here he is practising his craft in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The corpse of a top end call girl, Nino Adamia is fished out of the Mtkvari (Zura), Ramaz promises her grief-stricken mother he will find the killer, but it will mean ruffling the feathers of a few prominent people, not least of which is Dato Kaldani, casino owner and local gangster who employed Nino to service some very important clients. Donadze’s immediate superior is lazy, incompetent and possibly corrupt. In his domestic life the detective has been having some difficulties with his girlfriend, Tamuna, a doctor, because he spends so much time devoted to his job. The plot moves along at a cracking pace and the Georgian Intelligence Service becomes interested when a couple of Russian agents are found to be involved. Living in Tbilisi, I appreciated the locales visited in the investigation, I was surprised none of the main characters had surnames ending in ‘-shvili‘ but they did have suitably Georgian first names. The South Ossetia autonomous republic was referred to as Shida Kartli throughout the novel which I found odd, Georgians usually refer to the region as the Tskhinvali region, it is true it is in Shida Kartli but so are towns like Gori, which are not part of the breakaway republic. I read a lot of police procedurals, this was the first I have read one set in Tbilisi, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to any one who loves crime fiction. I fully intend to continue reading the series.
Blog #2 