I immediately fell under the spell of Conor Farrington’s prose. This may well be ‘only’ a cosy-ish crime novel set in the sleepy back-water town of Roxiazny in Russia, but the language elevates it well above expectations. It feels like a book translated from Russian, but in fact the author grew up in Scotland!

Olga Pushkin is a put-upon single woman in her mid-thirties, working as a low ranking railway engineer and living with her good-for-nothing father. She spends her time helping her best friend Anna, shopping for her thankless aunt and cooking for her drunken father. She mourns the loss of her beloved mother, ‘…she was gone, and with her the magical grace that dissolved difficulties into laughter’. She dreams of studying literature and writing The Great Russian Novel.

‘But not today. Today she had to go to work. That was what Russian women did, day in, day out, regardless of drunken fathers or chauvinist foremen… The tracks lay always before them, the horizon forever receding. Maybe one day they would reach it. Maybe one day.’

Then the body of a young man is flung from the moving Trans-Siberian Express, knocking Olga unconscious in the snow. His throat is cut and his mouth is stuffed with coins. Enter Sergeant Vassily Marushkin, newly posted to Rosiazny. How can Olga resist helping him in his investigation? Another murder occurs, Marushkin is wrongfully imprisoned and there is enough political shenanigans and general mayhem to keep Olga very busy indeed. Will she be able to clear Marushkin of the trumped-up murder charge? Will her awful father get his comeuppance?

The sense of place created by Farrington is another appealing feature of this book. The cold is palpable:

‘The trailside plants were fragile with frost, and snapped like dried twigs at the slightest touch. Her breath crackled in the air like jet exhaust, and she felt the microscopic build-up of ice at the end of her eyelashes…At times like this Olga thought that cold was more than just an absence of heat. It felt like a malevolent force of its own, a withering, hostile spirit suspended in the lifeless air…’

If you love [b:The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency|7061|The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency #1)|Alexander McCall Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459953654l/7061.SY75.jpg|826298] or [b:The Thursday Murder Club|46000520|The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)|Richard Osman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1582287822l/46000520.SY75.jpg|70861405], then I’m sure that you’ll enjoy spending time in Russia with the feisty Olga Pushkin. I look forward to the second instalment in the series, [b:Blood on the Siberian Snow|59660220|Blood on the Siberian Snow (Olga Pushkin #2)|C.J. Farrington|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|93950262].