A thriller in the vein of Smillas Sense of Snow features the mayor of a Siberian town--a remote place where nothing is as it seems--who helps a pretty Russian-American scientist accused of murder. Simultaneous. Searching for answers to a savage triple murder that may be connected to an American oil company, the mayor of a Siberian village takes up the defense of a female Russian-American scientist he believes is innocent of the crimes. Siberian Light is a thriller set in Siberia as corrupt capitalism replaces corrupt communism. The protagonist is a former geologist who is now the mayor of a Siberian city. When he is called upon to investigate the death of a shady "bizness man," he must use all the resources he can muster, including his expertise in the exotic geology of the remote Siberian landscape. Played out on a broad and unfamiliar territory, the novel moves back and forth from a small Siberian city to the great Tungunska oil fields and to the Taiga forest where the endangered Siberian tiger is slowly disappearing.As the novel opens, a shady Russian businessman has been killed in the Siberian oil town of Markovo. Gregori Nowek, the mayor of the city, begins an investigation at the behest of a Moscow bigwig, only to learn that a KGB retread, Kaznin, has taken charge of the open-and-shut case--to protect the real killers who work for his "Nomenklatura" bosses. They frame a beautiful Russian-American woman, a tiger researcher, for the murders, though Nowek has discovered evidence that points to foreign involvement, leading to the Russo-American venture. Only Nowek, a man who has given up hope in law and in the future, can save her, and by doing so find a way to restore faith and hope again.
