Sirk TV Book Review: THE DARKENING FIELD [Minotaur]

The ideal of past times reflect in the notion that people are inherently who they were raised to be. This takes on a special predilection when looking through the advent glasses of the Soviet Union since many things that were dictated were said for the persistence of somebody watching and listening and not necessarily what the person who spoke it felt.In this instance, the plot device within "The Darkening Field" [William Ryan/Minotaur/336pgs] operates on the construct that everything displayed is being hidden behind a mask for a comparative reason that selectively might be simply to not be thrown in the gulag for not being a "model citizen". What is interesting about this structure as well is that it holds true for the detective in question who has been sent to the outskirt reaches of the country to investigate a murder of a socialite film worker who by some stretch had ties to Center Party members. What evolves is a exercise in class structure from a system that supposedly does not function on class values, but rather evangelizes that it works for the common good. Mix this in with a swirling murder investigation story intersperesed around a film set and the stage is created to intermix a narrative that is both foreign and familiar to a Western-based mentality. Like the current structure with China, the idea of intensity and opportunity in the West paints an undeniable picture of both hope and temptation but the vicious truth revolves in the fact that everyone is angling in their own agenda, even within communist rule. The personage of Kolya, the underworld crime lord who makes his money but also keeps an element of nationalism at heart, is a defining character because the capitalist structure of his world is based on a necessity while his blood, Slivka, the charming and responsible local partner of our intrepid detective, understands the world without disappearing into the desperateness of it all. Eventually, intrigue overcomes family dynamics but undeniably the reason for the problems in the first place stem from the aspect that people never truly are what they set out to be.B-