Black Wolf by G.D.Abson

According to Russian legend, a Black Wolf is a result of a wolf mating with a domestic dog. “Outcasts, destined by be neither one thing or the other. The wolves in their pack attack them for being different and they are shot when seeking human company.” No one trusts a Black Wolf.

That’s a good description of Captain Natalya Ivanova. A ranking officer in the Criminal Investigations Directorate in St. Petersburg who seeks only the truth. A truth that may be in line with Party dictates. The people she investigates don’t trust her because she doesn’t toe the Party line. The victims don’t trust her because she is part of the Party establishment. An honest menti. A Black Wolf.

An educated building surveyor with a 2yo son, Elizaveta Kalinina, has started to be accepted by the Decembrists. A radical fringe group in Russia with a history of civil disobedience and bent on exposing political corruption. She, Max (a university faculty) and Gregor (former party member since marginalized and now a videographer for hire) have been digging into gov’t honchos who live far above their means. Out of town dachas are being filmed in prep for a Youtube documentary.

January, 2018. Dang cold and snowy in St. Petersburg, up near the Finland border. A local traffic cop on duty near a string of those dachas stops at a snow bank to relieve himself and finds Kalinina’s body. The case falls to Ivanov. But given the location, the Russian version of the FBI, Sledstvennyi Komitet (Sledkom) takes over. Their job it to clear the case, truth be damned. They claim Kalinina was a prostitutka who died of an overdose. That doesn’t jive with what the medical examiner says or what her own criminologist found. Not to mention that Max’s twin sister gets to Ivanova to tell here that Max is now missing.

Ivanova’s boss, the entirely disagreeable former FSB Colonel Dostoynov tells her she’s done with the case and done with the Service if she continues to dig. But when the Black Wolf bears her teeth, she's on the stalk. Into the Decembrists, into the traffic cop who found the body, into Gregor, into Max's brother, into that string of dachas and the paper trail of ownership, why the intense security at those dachas, and some videos of the dachas from a wrecked drone, one scene in particular. What she finds just might get her killed.

All this while a couple other side-stories evolve in the knee-deep snow and frigid cold. Like her step son making the moves on Max’s sister. Like her husband, Misha and also a cop in the Directorate, being driven out of his job and into prison by Dostoynov. Like her partner, the plodding but reliable (most of the time) Rogov, also being a target of Dosotynov.

This is the 2^nd in a series by Abson. The first, Motherland, was well received by the boys here at MRB and Abson hasn’t lost his touch. We are carefully shown the black (multi-layered political corruption) and white (Ivanona, Decembrists) of Russia in all their glory. Ivanova has two reasons for digging so deeply: find and punish those actually responsible and to make sure that Kalinina’s son grows up knowing his mother wasn’t an addict/prostitute.  

This first-class police procedural is fraught with unforeseen twists that leading us through a culture we only know from biased media outlets and western political agendas. Probably more truth here than what we’ve seen. Much like the trilogy from Zoe Ferraris about a female cop in Saudi Arabia, Abson puts the local dirty laundry out there for us to absorb.

As a reminder to the Russian elite: better remember to toe the line. Step over it, and Captain Black Wolf will find you. 

ECD