Translated by Boris Dralyuk
HarperVia
Published May 26, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
In the third Kyiv Mystery by one of Ukraine’s most celebrated authors, a young investigator navigating the unsettled society after a civil war is faced with an impossible puzzle: How did fifty Red Army soldiers visiting a bathhouse disappear, leaving their boots, weapons, and uniforms behind?
There was no way for them all to march out, naked, without being seen. Yet they have vanished without a trace. While the case seems impossible, Samson Kolechko is a dogged detective, and he has an unusual tool at hand. He can secretly eavesdrop using one of his ears, severed by a Cossack, that can still hear. Having placed his bit of personal equipment in the lining of the jacket of a bathhouse employee, and putting together every clue he can find, he eventually is able to crack the difficult case.
These are unusual mysteries, not bound by genre expectations. The pacing is peripatetic, there’s a touch of magical realism, and the setting contributes to the sense that nothing makes sense and anything could happen. Yet there’s also a fair amount of humor and gentle poking at the ironies of living in the midst of war and chaos, as well as some seriousness. Samson’s beloved wife works for a statistical bureau where, to her dismay, counting things (an activity she relishes) is giving way to confiscating things, triggering violence between Bolshevik authorities and the people. She’s a true believer in the revolution who is suddenly confronted with uncertainty about where all this is going. There are also subtle echoes of the current war, with a striking scene in the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, recently the site of a struggle between the Moscow-based Orthodox church and the Ukrainian Orthodox church.
We’re lucky to have this series, ably translated by Boris Dralyuk, that gives us a chance to visit historical wartime Kyiv through the imagination of an inventive and talented writer.