The Forbidden Zone: A Novel

Tolstoy would have approved of the way Michael Hetzer uses large chunks of recent Russian history to build his strong and poignant first thriller. Hetzer--who edited an English-language newspaper in Moscow from 1990 to 1995 and witnessed the vast changes that swept the country--begins his story in the 1980s, as American astrophysicist Katherine Sears and Russian colleague Victor Perov join for a research project and a love affair. Their relationship, already complicated by the fact that Victor's mother is a top government official, becomes even more dangerous when Katherine discovers that Victor's brother, Anton, didn't really die in Afghanistan but is a dissident being held prisoner in a psychiatric gulag.

Aided by a disillusioned KGB agent, Katherine and Victor begin a search for Anton that takes them not only to the vast wastes of Siberia but also back in time, into a mystery that began 40 years before. Hetzer uses the 1940s poetry of the marvelous Anna Akhmatova like background music--"We're not good at saying good-bye / We wander around, shoulders touching. / It's begun to get dark already, / You look vacant, I say nothing"--and it sets the perfect tone of guilt and regret. --Dick Adler