Read as part W of the “Along the Library
Shelf” reading journey
Chosen because
This one leapt off the shelf due to its mix
of a familiar genre (crime) in an unfamiliar and intriguing setting (Mongolia).
The Review
With press reports that the Ulan Baatar police
are failing to take seriously a missing persons case, Doripalam, Head of
Serious Crimes Team, steps in to add some high-profile policing. A good job too
(although a little late) as when he arrives to interview the mother of the
missing teenage boy he finds only her brutally murdered body in her ransacked ger (a Mongolian tented dwelling).
It’s almost a welcome distraction from a
recently collapsed trial at which a notorious but untouchable crime boss,
Muunokhoi, walked free when some prosecution evidence was exposed as faked.
Tunjin is the culpable detective,
immediately suspended, but his life is more at risk than his career as
Muunokhoi is not the forgiving and forgetting type; so Tunjin’s off on the run.
Investigating the whole mess is Nergui,
ex-head of Serious Crimes and now upstairs in the Justice Ministry. His exact
brief is unclear but his agenda is less so – he and Muunokhoi have history, and
this is personal.
The story unfolds as a three-hander with
Nergui, Doripalam and Tunjin working in loose concert via politics, policing
and personal enterprise against an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful
opponent, who for the first time appears uncharacteristically to be panicking.
Someone has something he fears could expose him – is it to do with the missing
boy or something the attractive female judge, Sarangarel Radnaa, knows from a
previous life?
The action is pretty relentless, switching
between the three viewpoints and taking us from the high society and mean
streets of UB out to the nomadic settlements of the limitless steppes. The body
count rises as the forces of good and evil converge for a final climactic
showdown.
There are some thoughtful interludes; Nergui
and Doripalam care about their country and provide some insights into modern
day Mongolia, with the previous Soviet and current decadent Western capitalist
influences both grafted onto bedrock of tradition and culture suited to neither.
Read another?
Nergui and Doripalam make a good team; this
is their second outing and I will certainly look out for “The Shadow Walker”.
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