Moscow Underground

I would not have bought this book. It is a Christmas present. Why not? I have never heard of Catherine Merridale and never read anything by Simon Sebag Montefiori. I know people who bought his Jerusalem: a Biography but none who finished it ; more than eight hundred pages and more than twenty-five hours as an audio book. One friend ill-advisedly chose it for her book club.

Three things you may not know about Simon S M: call him Sebag, never Simon; he knows all the words to Evita and so does his wife; she is also an author, Santa Palmer-Tomkinson, but she wasn’t born on Christmas Day.

I had not heard of Gareth Rubin but I have just ordered a copy of his novel: Holmes and Moriarty, authorised by the Conan Doyle estate. I read House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, also authorised but with a nasty dénouement not in keeping with Conan Doyle’s style.

Now for Catherine Merridale. Moscow Underground is her first work of fiction and, like Sebag, she is an historian and her special subject is Russia. She completed a doctorate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her thesis was “The Communist Party in Moscow 1925-1932”. This is when most of Moscow Underground is set. It is a most satisfying historical thriller. This is a slight spoiler but this is what the author has to say about her novel.

”The lost library of ancient Byzantium is a matter of historical record, as is the construction of the Moscow Metro in the 1930s. In happier international times, I had the pleasure of investigating both, and I am grateful to the friends in Moscow who made that possible.”