This book encapsulates the transition from running an "honest" business under corrupt communism to running an "honest" business under a corrupt post-Soviet gangster oligarchy. Although the events of the book take place over just a few months, they describe the rise of the gangster class that birthed Putin. Like all good satire, the utter absurdity of it reveals a lot of truths.

Max is a wealthy businessman. He runs a document forgery business - an essential service in Russia's bureaucratic system. He is happily married, although the relationship with his wife is tense. He also has a young mistress, who is married to another businessman. His mistress's husband hires him for a huge forgery project to cover up his past involvement in a scandal (his company took government money to build a railroad, pocketed the money, never built the railroad, and pretended it had been built) so that he can impress potential partners in a new business venture. Max finds himself drawn into this new business venture against his wishes, and has to risk his life dealing with gangsters.

The author is not Russian, and in some ways this is very obvious (for instance, he sticks to the same nickname for each character throughout the whole book, which makes it so much easier for non-Russians to read), but it also seems to perfectly capture Russian black humor and twisted relationship with reality.

This is an engaging thriller. It can be gory (you can't really write about Russian gangsters without a torture scene or too). The humor is rarely in the form of outright jokes (except for the scenes where Max's brother is planning a theme park called Sovietland that will allow American tourists to enjoy the full Soviet experience, including secret police interrogations and the gulag), but instead relies on the normalization of utterly ridiculous situations (going to a sauna, getting drunk on vodka because there's no socially acceptable way to not drink as much as the naked gangster next to you, then just casually walking away after someone comes in and shoots everyone in the sauna). Everything in the book is totally over-the-top without ever feeling totally implausible. ( )