Hard Currency, Stuart M. Kaminsky
Hard Currency, Stuart M. Kaminsky
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Hard Currency

Author: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Narrator: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Unabridged: 8 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/24/2021


Synopsis

The Soviet Union is dead, and Russian society has been fractured into a thousand pieces. Through those cracks seeps the first serial killer in the country's history, whose exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. As his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac who's killed forty women so far, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must depart for Havana to avoid an international incident.

First, Rostnikov must confront his fear of flying—or more specifically, flying on Russian airplanes. Assuming he lands safely in Havana, this case will require the utmost diplomacy. A Russian politician is accused of murdering a young Cuban woman. Rostnikov's superiors want things wrapped up cleanly and quickly. Unfortunately, their man in Havana is about to discover there is nothing simple about this murder.

About Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema-two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life's work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood's Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life.

Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as "the anti-Philip Marlowe." In 1981's Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ed on August 26, 2009

The main protagonist in this story is Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, nicknamed the Washtub, because of his physique. He reminds me of Arkady Renko of Gorky Park, one of my favorite fictional characters. Hard Currency is basically two stories, the first involving Rostnikov in an investigation of the mur......more

Goodreads review by Mal on October 24, 2023

FOLLOW A RUSSIAN DETECTIVE ON A MURDER CASE IN CASTRO'S CUBA Sasha Tkach and Emil Karpo (“the Vampire”) are in Moscow, on the trail of a Russian serial killer with multiple personality disorder. And Karpo is also looking into the death of the Kazakhstani foreign minister, allegedly of natural causes.......more

Goodreads review by Steve on November 16, 2017

This is a good entry in a fine series. In this volume of the series, Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and an assistant, attractive and humorless Elena Timofeyeva, are dispatched to Cuba to aid in the investigation of a Russian advisor working in Cuba who has been arrested for murder. At the same time, two......more