It's 1997, and a retired general has risen up into the sky over Kiev, hung from a huge Coca-Cola balloon. The corpse vanishes from the forensics lab, only to reappear--missing the right thumb. Though the murder of this important government official warrants a full team of investigators, it's assigned to Viktor Slutsky, a mere lieutenant whose usual case load consists of petty street crimes. The narrative flips back and forth between Viktor and Nik Tsensky, a young interpreter trying to earn enough money for his wife and son to join him in Kiev. Nik is hired by a mysterious colonel to rescue a man from an arranged fake attempt on his life--a man disconcertingly dressed just like Nik.
The bodies pile up rapidly, one of them in Viktor's car. Both protagonists receive mysterious orders over the telephone as the plot thickens, and everyone seems to know more about what's happening in The Case of the General's Thumb than the hapless pair.
So what does the general's thumb have to do with all this? You won't find out till the very end. For Kurkov, the ending is less important than the fun of leading us through a world of deaf blondes driving hearses and revolvers that fire backwards, where bugs are planted in the walls and security cameras trained on the doors. Kurkov employs a subtle magic that pulls you in until you realize you're actually starting to care about these helpless, violent men trapped by economic circumstances into a grim dance of death. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle