LONDONGRAD

 If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”—E. M. Forster

Through seven previous novels, Reggie Nadelson has created one of the more memorable characters in detective fiction: Artie Cohen, New York police detective and first-generation American with complex ties to his Russian past, especially his close friendship with the enigmatic and flamboyant New York/London club owner Tolya Sverdloff. Now, in Londongrad—by far Nadelson’s most ambitious novel to date—Artie is faced with a murder that strikes at him personally and will ultimately place his best friend’s life in his hands as it challenges his own loyalty., In a playground in Brooklyn, Artie is led to a dead girl tied up in duct tape on a children’s swing. He soon realizes the killer murdered the wrong girl—the intended victim was Valentina Sverdloff, Tolya’s daughter, long adored by Artie. Artie flies to London to tell Tolya and finds himself enmeshed on his friend’s behalf in a maelstrom of Russian money and crime. Like Berlin at the end of World War II , somebody tells Artie, Londongrad, as it’s known, has become an offshore island for the new Russian underworld. Over his head, Artie is drawn further in, to Moscow, where, balancing between the old KGB and the new FSB, between the dazzle and grimness of Russia today, he uncovers a painful truth about his past that puts Tolya’s life in the balance.

Audio & Video

	The Body Reggie Nadelson reads from the opening chapter of Londongrad; the discovery of the body which will drag Artie Cohen, against his will, into a maelstrom that will devastate those closest to him.
Manhattan Reggie Nadelson reads a section from her novel Londongrad, as Artie Cohen drives through Manhattan to his friend Tolya's place on the Fourth of July.

advance reviews for LONDONGRAD

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Reggie Nadelson.  Walker, $25 (400p) ISBN 978-0-8027-1752-8

A chance encounter leads Artie Cohen to a disturbing Brooklyn crime scene in Nadelson’s outstanding eighth novel to feature the New York City police detective and son of a former KGB officer (after 2007’s Fresh Kills): a woman has been wrapped in duct tape and tied to a playground swing. Artie calls the murder in, but his attempts to remain uninvolved in the ensuing probe are futile. The more Artie learns about the victim, Masha Panchuk, the more he suspects that she was not the killer’s intended target, and that his love, Valentina Sverdloff, daughter of his best friend, Tolya, was. When someone smothers Valentina to death, Artie must travel to London to break the tragic news to Tolya, a shady entrepreneur whose business activities straddle the line between legitimate and illegitimate. As the dark, compelling plot gathers momentum, Artie, a principled, street-smart guy with very human failings, launches his own quest for justice.  (July)

Kirkus Reviews

NYPD’s Artie Cohen (Fresh Kills, 2007, etc.) learns that sometimes you just have to go home again.

The end of his marriage opens a door Artie might have seen unlocking, as his avuncular affection for best friend Tolya Sverdloff’s beautiful daughter Valentina ripens into something more. But after only one night in Artie’s bed, his new love disappears, and the detective realizes that whoever left Masha Panchuk’s slender blond body smothered in duct tape on a Brooklyn playground probably meant to kill Val. Although he doesn’t really trust Bobo Leven, the Russian-born cop is who Artie turns to in hope of picking up Val’s trail. And when neither can save her, Artie does the unthinkable. Even though Tolya couldn’t convince Artie to come to London to celebrate his birthday, and even though federal agent Roy Pettus couldn’t persuade Artie to go to London to spy on the nouveaux-riches Russkis who flock there to spend their petrobucks, he goes to London to find Val’s killer. Armed with a picture of Val and a former boyfriend he knows only as Greg, Artie learns that even the Russian ghetto of Notting Hill isn’t his last stop. All roads lead to Moscow, and the ex-pat who shudders at the thought of leaving his lower Manhattan loft must travel to a far-off place that’s all too familiar.

Moving Tolya and his family front and center galvanizes Nadelson’s often torpid prose. This is the tale she was born to tell, and she spins it with power and grace.

Library Journal

Londongrad. Jul 2009. 400 p. Walker, hardcover, $25.00. (9780802717528).

 New York police detective and Russian immigrant Artie Cohen is looking forward to a week’s vacation (crime-novel heroes should know better than to take vacations) when he agrees to deliver some books to an aging fellow Russian living near Brighton Beach. On the way, he finds a dead body wrapped in silver duct tape from head to foot, a signal from the Russian mob to keep your mouth shut. Quickly, the trail leads to Artie’s best friend, nightclub owner and possible gangster Tolya Sverdloff, and his daughter, Valentina, with whom Artie, despite a 20-year age difference, is in love. As the pace quickens and the body count mounts, Nadelson follows the money (and, in the new world of Russian full-frontal capitalism, there is still plenty of it) from Manhattan to London to Moscow. There is an almost surreal fury to the action in an Artie Cohen novel, and if the narrative voice seems to falter now and again, such infelicities of style are quickly forgotten as one’s pulse rate accelerates. Best of all, though, is the neon-bright portrait Nadelson paints of the new Russia, awash in sleaze and dirty money.  — Bill Ott

Read a Chapter

To read a chapter from Londongrad, click here.