VODKA NEAT by Anna Bundy: A Thriller Made Excellent by Descriptions of Russia and Soviet Union

In VODKA NEAT, Faith Zanetti is a 35-year-old English journalist, a foreign correspondent. Her current assignment is to Russia simply because she lived there 16 years ago when it was the Soviet Union so knows the language. She finds as soon as she arrives the second time that she is suspected of a gruesome double murder that occurred the first time.

So Zanetti now needs to find the Russian husband she married all those years ago, when she was 19, and then left behind when she returned to London. He was with her when they discovered the bloody bodies.

This novel certainly is a mystery/thriller as Zanetti, drinking a lot and talking tough throughout, unravels this mystery: what really occurred in the Soviet Union, and what is occurring in Russia? But VODKA NEAT is excellent because the mystery/thrills include descriptions of the Soviet Union as it was and Russia as it is and her life as an innocent 19-year-old in one and as a tough 35-year-old in the other. Zanetti’s comments are sarcastic and witty.

For example, at one point, Zanetti is talking about McDonalds when she was in the Soviet Union. "My friend Adrian always used to steal the napkins, straws, toilet light bulbs, and loo roll. So did everyone in Moscow, so in the end they locked the light bulbs into immovable globes and stopped providing everything else."

Another example: "These days a lot of Moscow looks quite beautiful, if a bit inhospitable and imposing. Mayor Luzhkov cleaned it up for a big anniversary, but he didn't clean up any of the bits where foreigh dignitaries weren't going to see. These are the bits where everyone lives."

Obviously, the author, Anna Blundy, has been here herself. As a matter of fact, she lived and worked in Russia as a journalist. So when she shows us the Soviet Union and Russia, we really do see them the way a Western journalist would find them. She’s sarcastic and witty, but she’s serious. And her Faith Zanetti is authentic.

This novel has been available in the U.S. since 2006. Why did I only recently hear of it?