I Love It When This Happens: The Rasputin Relic

I don't remember how I heard about The Rasputin Relic but I ordered it and, once I started reading it I had a very hard time time putting it down. This is one of those books that, as a novel has some flaws, but as story-telling is just flat mesmerizing – appropriately so considering the subject matter.

The story begins in a Pennsylvania town that has slipped into decline since the closing of the mines that once made the entire area prosperous and attracted thousands of immigrants,largely Eastern European and Russian to work in those mines. Since I grew up not far from there I heard stories about the hundreds of miles of mining shafts under towns where fires burned for years, noxious gasses were emitted, and sudden collapses and cave-ins shook the entire town. Because many of the immigrants were Eastern Orthodox the skylines of these towns were punctuated with onion-dome steeples and I have lots of memories of looking at those skylines and being intrigued by those exotic-looking churches throughout the Lackawana River Valley.

The story opens in Middle Valley, Pennsylvania where Viktor Rhostok, a third generation Russian-American, is the acting chief of police. An old man named Vanya has died under very mysterious circumstances – he was confined to the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital – and, though the coroner rules it an accident, Rhostok has his doubts about an 80 year old man managing to crush all the bones in his right hand before falling off the roof of the hospital. The old man, it turns out, is one of three old men who have died in different parts of the country, all with destroyed right hands – and, Rhostok discovers, all veterans of the WWII era 101 Airborne all of whom were part of Operation Overlord, the preparation for D-Day. Rhostok knows one thing for sure, they might have been old men, but they were not weak, easily intimidated old men. (I want to add that, as the story progressed, I could not help but be reminded of Chekov's play, Uncle Vanya, the theme of which was unhappy people and wasted lives.)

Two months later another strange death occurs. Vanya's 50-something son returns from Las Vegas with a stunningly beautiful young wife and, within a few weeks, dies while making love to his bride. The young widow, still in shock, discovers a key to a safety deposit box that her father-in-law rented in 1946 and which has not been opened since. When the box is finally opened it is found to contain a huge male hand, still plump and bloody and fresh. Within hours the game is a-foot and all the people present at the opening of the box begin to die – all of them bleeding to death.

Rhostok, who was taught to read an ancient and arcane form of Russian, is the only one present who recognizes the writing on the paper in which the relic is wrapped. It is the name Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the Mad Monk of Russia who beguiled the Tsarina Alexandra and was credited with saving the life of her young hemophiliac son, Alexi. It is up to Rhostok to find out what is going on, why all these people are dying, and to do it all while keeping it quiet lest unwanted publicity erupt into religious hysteria.

The book is just plain fascinating. The writing is straight-forward and never intrusive and the author, William M. Valtos, has done a tremendous amount of research. In the past I have criticized books for containing long passages of speeches and explanations – a fictional form that seems to be growing in popularity since The DaVinci Code – and Valtos' characters do a lot of that but the stories they have to tell are so intriguing I was very willing to overlook the form. The plot involves phenomenal amounts of Russian history, culture, mythology, religious mysticism, and medical anomalies. There is discussion of the phenomena of the “incorruptibles”, the role of the 101^st Airborne, and contemporary biological warfare.

And some of the characters are just great. Rhostok is delicious, as are the two women he is forced to deal with, the widow Nicole whose life has been traumatized by years of sexual abuse and slavery, and a news reporter, Robyn, who is only too willing to use her sexuality to get what she wants. There are mad scientists and another equally mad Russian priest as well as a pantheon of really nasty bad guys.

If you are intrigued by Russian history and willing to suspend disbelief, this is a delicious read. I found it to be somewhat reminiscent of some of the books by one of my favorite authors Arturo Perez-Reverte, especially The Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas. I've ordered Valtos' novel La Magdalena and if it is as good as this one I'll be thrilled.


Fascinating interview with author William M. Valtos (audio).

Thanks for reading.