Dead Meat

by Philip Kerr

Everyone is guilty of something...In comtemporary Russia the old ghosts have been laid to rest, but the stench of corruption is just as strong as ever. Now a top-level Moscow investigator, dispatched to St. Petersburg, is about to discover just how deep the decadence runs--in both the corridors of power and the labyrinth of the human heart. The man from Moscow has been teamed up with Grushko, a palm-reading local detective with Elvis Presley hair. Together they embark on a investigation into the brutal murder of a famous and controversial journalist. To Grushko, an expert in the ruthlessness of the rising Russian Mafia, the killing has all the earmarks of a professional hit. But in the new Russia appearances have almost as little value as the new ruble. Soon the focus of the investigation will fall on the journalist's widow, a pinup beauty whom one detective will find impossible to trust...the other to resist.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Noir, Russia

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 1993

About the author

Philip Kerr was a British author. He was best known for his Bernie Gunther series of 13 historical thrillers and a children's series, Children of the Lamp, under the name P.B. Kerr.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Χρύσα Βασιλείου · Rating 3 out of 5]

Η αλήθεια είναι πως, ως αναγνώστρια και ως άτομο, ποτέ δεν "ταίριαξα" με τη Ρωσία, την ΕΣΣΔ, τη Σοβιετική Ένωση... Η νοοτροπία, η γλώσσα, τα ονόματα, ο τρόπος ζωής, η ιδεολογία τους, όλα μου φαίνονται εντελώς περίεργα, ανοίκεια και προσωπικά αδιάφορα, ώστε να θελήσω να εντρυφήσω και να μάθω κάτι παραπάνω. Οπότε, σπάνια θα επέλεγα να διαβάσω κάποιο μυθιστόρημα που να διαδραματίζεται στη χώρα αυτή από την εποχή του Στάλιν και μετά. Βέβαια, κατά καιρούς έχω διαβάσει ιστορίες εποχής (ειδικά επί της δυναστείας των Ρομανώφ) που μου άρεσαν πολύ. Αστυνομικό και Ρωσία ως συνδυασμό πάντως πολύ δύσκολα θα επέλεγα.

Βέβαια, όταν πέφτει στα χέρια σου ένα βιβλίο του αγαπημένου σου συγγραφέα, το ξανασκέφτεσαι. Και κάπως έτσι ξεκίνησα να διαβάσω το "Ψοφίμι". Εξαιτίας του Kerr. Δεν μπορώ να πω πως μετάνιωσα την ανάγνωσή του, ούτε όμως και πως το κατέταξα στα top αναγνώσματά μου. Δεν είναι Μπέρνι Γκούντερ, έχει τη "σφραγίδα" του διαφορετικού και τη δική του ξεχωριστή ταυτότητα. Διατηρεί το ενδιαφέρον και καταφέρνει να συνδυάσει μεταξύ τους στοιχεία που αρχικά φαντάζουν εντελώς παράταιρα - κι όμως, αποτελούν τελικά κομμάτι της τελικής εικόνας.
Γνωρίζοντας το στυλ του Kerr (έρευνα σε πηγές αλλά και επιτόπια για ό,τι γράφει) μπορώ να φανταστώ την ακρίβεια με την οποία προσέγγισε όλες τις παραμέτρους για την κατάσταση που επικρατούσε στη Ρωσία την περίοδο που περιγράφεται στο βιβλίο. Μια κατάσταση οπωσδήποτε λυπηρή και στενάχωρη, όμως πέρα για πέρα ρεαλιστική.
Ειδικά σε όσους αρέσουν τα μυθιστορήματα που εκτυλίσσονται στη χώρα αυτή τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες, ειδικά μετά τη διάλυση της ΕΣΣΔ, θα αρέσει πιστεύω ακόμα περισσότερο. Εγώ, παρόλο που δεν είναι ακριβώς του γούστου μου όπως προείπα, δεν μπορώ να μην αναγνωρίσω την εξαιρετική δουλειά του συγγραφέα ως προς αυτό. Και βέβαια, ως προς την ίδια την αστυνομική πλοκή, που είναι ευφάνταστη και συναρπαστική. Όμως, στις σελίδες του "Ψοφιμιού" ο Kerr παρουσιάζει επίσης τα πολλά προσωπεία της κοινωνίας, τους ανθρώπους, τα πιστεύω, την καθημερινότητά τους, τον αγώνα τους να επιβιώσουν σε ένα κράτος βυθισμένο στην αβεβαιότητα, τη φτώχια, τον φόβο για τη Μαφία και το έγκλημα που βασιλεύει παντού. Μιλάμε για ένα μυθιστόρημα-καθρέφτη μιας κοινωνίας, που έχει να προσφέρει στους αναγνώστες του πολλά περισσότερα από έναν αστυνομικό γρίφο προς επίλυση.

Για την εμπειρία της ανάγνωσης και μόνο, το συστήνω!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My God, Philip Kerr wrote this? Really? I got this book off of the giveaway pile at Warner Books, where I worked from 1995-1996 in the advertising and promotions department, a stupendously great job for a voracious reader. Yes, dear Goodreads member, stacks of books were sitting around, available for anyone who wanted them, absolutely free. I read through a book every couple of days in those years before the internet killed my attention span, mostly thrillers, riding the A train back and forth to my apartment on 97th Street. And after all these years, I still remember Dead Meat. It was a terrific read, great fun, with an amusing style, a gritty plot, and sharp characterization. The knowledge of the culture and the level of detail reminded me of Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park. A highly recommended thriller.

[Grada (BoekenTrol) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the fact that this is a rather thin book, it took me some time to finish it. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad book, far from that.
It was just the shear amount of violence, of lack of respect for human life, of lies and betrayal that made me pause from time to time.
Of course I knew about what happened in Russia right after the collapse. But that's a different level. Realizing to what extend things were bad, very bad and going back to those days of perestroika and glasnost is a whole new 'level' of understanding.
Touching even the memories I have of trips to Moscow and some other places during those days in the early '90.

If you're interested in a straight forward book about crime, maffia, corruption, a touch of the old system, info on life in the newly formed Russia and even humour, then this is a book for you.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some books that can transcend time, even if they focus on a specific period. This isn't one of them. Instead, Kerr locks you in to a particular moment in Russian history, one that has largely been overshadowed by the cartoon version of late-stage Soviet empire and the contemporary thug-riche context that dominates Russian culture. Instead, Kerr brings you a setting filled with concern over hard currency, the rise of the mafia, the early days of the hand over of state institutions to the now-billionaires who prop up the Putin/Medvedev regime, and so on. It was an interesting moment, and Kerr captures it in a way that is better than how most writing today would be able to.

Otherwise, the novel puts forward a pretty unremarkable narrative, with a first-person perspective that is simply discarded in moments where it is convenient (i.e., when the chief character is in another city and thus not obviously able to recollect the conversations taking place thousands of miles away) and a tendency to read as if the author had highlighted a bunch of interesting facts from an almanac that needed to be shoe-horned in as local color whenever the topic turned to Russian society.

That said, I don't think I've ever felt more comfortable giving a book a rating than with the 2 this one earns. It definitely doesn't meet the level of 'average' so a 3 is out of question, and while I really want to give it a 1 just to appease my sinuses (the copy I had came with an unhealthy amount of mold, thanks I guess to improper storage at the used book store in Florida where I picked it up this summer), I just can't.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in May 2002.

The aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the hardships faced in Russia since seem to have fallen out of the news in recent years. This is probably both because the situation has been gradually improving and because it lacks the novelty value that makes it news in Western Europe. The time following the coup attempt in 1992 was one of great hardship throughout the former USSR, and saw the development of violent organised crime, known generically as the Russian Mafia. (In fact, of course, and as reflected in this novel, there is a lot of rivalry between different gangs, many of which have a racially based organisation, so that the Chechens and Georgians are constantly fighting, for example.) Even if everyday living is easier now, the organised crime syndicates have not gone away. In the realms of fiction, the Russian Mafia seem to be a popular subject for thrillers already. (Proof of this is that it's been used as a scenario for a James Bond film, as well as related events providing the basis for Frederick Forsyth's Icon.)

Philip Kerr's thriller is more realistic than either of these. It is about anti-Mafia units in the police force, the main character being a Moscow policeman ostensibly on a fact finding mission to study the methods used by the St Petersburg equivalent. He is actually meant to be checking that the leader of this unit, named Grushko, is as clean of corruption as he seems, as this is very unlikely in Russia in the early nineties (when inflation and shortages meant that the legitimate income of a policeman didn't go far at all). While the narrator, the Moscow cop, is in St Petersburg, a prominent anti-Mafia journalist (who likes to describe himself as Russia's first investigative journalist) is murdered, and so any consideration about bribery is taken over by the investigation into this crime.

Kerr's novel is based on considerable research, including the co-operative help of the real equivalents of Grushko. He also brings in many of the images associated with Russia in the last decade, such as an unsafe nuclear power industry, crumbling infrastructure, corruption and food queues. The setting is really well done, and makes the novel a bit different, both from the unrealistic stories I've already mentioned and from more conventional crime thrillers which have a similar style (such as Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels). Dead Meat is an engrossing thriller, if bleak, well worth reading and encouraging me to find more Philip Kerr.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, and bought this as soon as it came out in the early 1990s, but for some reason never got around to reading it until now. It was written in the early 1990s, just after the Soviet Union had splintered into the Commonwealth of Independent States, and for a book set in such a specific time, it's aged quite well.

A nameless protagonist has been dispatched by Moscow to St. Petersburg to "liase" with the local police to learn about their methods for combating the mafia. Of course, he's really there to see if they have been bought off as the twin perils of privatization and mafias are filling the void created by the dissolution of the strong central state. In St. Petersburg, he's paired up with a gruff, no-nonsense detective named Grushko, who leads the efforts against the various Georgian, Chechen, and Ukrainian gangs with their fingers in the protection, prostitution, and smuggling pies. However, when a prominent investigative journalist is murdered, things get a little more interesting....

Apparently, Kerr did a lot of primary research for this book, getting deep access to the St. Petersburg militia, and observing their tactics against organized crime. As a result, not only is the plotting solid, but the details of day to day uncertainty under the new economic system rings true. There's a balance between the camaraderie and humor of the police team, and the bleak reality of food prices no one can afford. Recommended for anyone interested in getting a sense of what the "new" Russia of the early 90s felt like.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dead Meat is a police procedural set in St Petersburg in 1993. The shortages of the Soviet era persist, but now the mafia control key goods not the state and prices are extortionate. Grushko heads up a special unit that tackles mafia crime, but such is the level of corruption in the police that he and his team is not above suspicion. A special investigator from Moscow is sent to provide an assessment under the guise of learning by being embedded into the team. He quickly finds himself actively working on mafia related cases, including the murder of a high profile journalist. Told in a hardboiled style and using plenty of local slang, Dead Meat charts Grushko’s investigation and the how his team are assessed in turn. The tale is relatively straightforward, but plot is engaging and lively. In particular, Kerr does a nice job of evoking the city and Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, and the politics and workings of the police, and there’s an interesting set of characters.

[Yanper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Δεν είναι Μπέρνι Γκούντερ, εντελώς διαφορετικό και κατά την άποψη μου όχι στα επίπεδα της σειράς με τον Γκούντερ. Αν και έχει τη δική του ταυτότητα θα μπορούσα να το χαρακτηρίσω έως και αδιάφορο και πολύ φτωχό σαν αστυνομική ιστορία.

[Vasilis Kalandaridis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Φιλιπ Κέρ χωρις Bernie Gunther.Μια χαρά βιβλιο,βουτιά στα ενδότερα του ρωσικού υποκόσμου με φόντο την Αγία Πετρούπολη που έτσι κι αλλιώς μου βγάζει κάτι εξωτικό.Διαβαζεται άνετα,χαλαρά.

[M. Sprouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
I'm bumping this up to three stars for two reasons. First it's Philip Kerr. Second, this novel had so much potential, where were the editing and guidance? Philip Kerr is a master, I feel like this was such an early work, it was more like practice for the excellent works to come. The first and last 50 pages of this book were decent, but not what we've come to expect from Kerr.

Dead Meat, could have been so much better. The whole narrator who was a character in the book failed miserably. Too much of the story was told from the past tense, from another character who had been at the scene. It would have been much improved if it was told in the first person by the main character, Grushko. Perhaps the most inexcusable error, was the lack of development of the beautiful Nina. More print would have been better put to use with her, than the overly redundant reporting of economic shortages. The above examples exemplify the major flaw with this book. That too much of the book was spent on the wrong things and the most interesting parts were given sparce attention.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice evocation of a particular place and time, adequate procedural plot, and extremely sloppy structure and proofreading:

* Come on, 300 deaths a DAY in St. Petersburg? (Ch 12)
* He leaves the room, and then interacts in a conversation in the room he left, then returns. (Ch 13)
* The author makes a point that the lead character did NOT speak with the Grushko before going to Moscow, then does what the detective was going to ask of him when there.
* The main character, a lawyer, changes a head gasket in two hours? (Ch 18) (Realistically, it fails quickly though.)
* Random, un-indicated shifts in point of view.

I'm depending on the details of the text to open up an alien culture -- that's the fun of reading a story set in a foreign setting -- and having to separate sloppiness from actual surprising detail is distracting.

[Janine Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nederlandse titel: Groesjko. Thriller die zich afspeelt in St Petersburg. Een wetenschapper is vermoord, waarschijnlijk door de maffia, maar welke? (Georgiërs, Tsjetsjenen,..). Team onder leiding van Groesjko probeert dit op te lossen, en worden vergezeld door onderzoeker uit Moskou die moet checken of het team niet corrupt is. Leest lekker weg (ondanks de Russische namen) met enerzijds de zoektocht naar aanwijzingen in de zaak, maar tegelijk iets over de persoonlijke situatie van de hoofdpersonen (& hun familie). Geeft tegelijk een beeld van de Russische samenleving.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Etwas blaß, leider. Ein landesweit bekannter Journalist wird getötet. In Petersburg. Der Ermittler soll eigentlich herausfinden, ob die örtliche Polizei korrupt ist.
Es stellt sich heraus, dass EU-Fleisch zusammen mit radioaktiven Material in die Stadt geschmuggelt wurde. Nicht sehr gesund. Die russische Mafia.

[Moirad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A period piece - Russia, 2 years after the fall of communism. The narrator definitely has some of the same characteristics as Bernie Gunther, Kerr's serial leading character, and there is a vivid evocation of the sleazy corruption alongside daily misery of life in St Petersburg at the time. Slight, in comparison with his Gunther novels, but enjoyable nevertheless.

[Michael Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style is typical Kerr. Set in Cold War Russia though it has so much similarity in the telling of the story to that series featuring his famous German policeman I almost expected Bernie Gunter to come round the corner at any moment. Neither was the storyline as gripping as that series. Overall, disappointing.

[CorrieGM · Rating 4 out of 5]

In het Nederlands gelezen onder de titel Groesjko, ook uitgekomen als Zwart vlees,
Mooie inkijk in het Rusland begin negentiger jaren , met gierende inflatie en exploderende misdaadcijfers. Treurig ook.
Goed geschreven.

[Richard Laznik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly conventional police thriller set in Russia a couple of years after the fall of communism. Some very nice jokes at the expense of the former regime.

[Νίκος Βαλασίδης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Καλή αστυνομική περιπέτεια. Διαβάζεται εύκολα και γρήγορα (300 σελ) Αλλά δεν είναι, πιστεύω, στο επίπεδο των περιπετειών που έγραψε ο συγγραφέας με ήρωα τον επιθεωρητή Μπέρνι Γκούντερ

[Hubert Ricard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting.

[Erik Tanouye · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got this at Second Story Books in Rockville at some point.

[Maddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

RATING: 4.25
An unnamed Moscow detective has been assigned to investigate corruption in the town of St. Petersburg. The assignment is temporary, and he works with a detective squad headed by a man named Yevgeni Ivanovich Grushko, covering his real intentions with a story about viewing how the local police in St. Petersburg handle the Mafia element. To all appearances, Grushko is a very honest man, and he opens his department to the Moscow detective, who lives and works with his men over a period of time.

When a prominent anti-Mafia journalist is murdered, the Moscow detective is an active participant in the investigation and seeks to learn his secrets from his widow. What is uncovered is far worse than a mere murder; the Mafia has instituted a scheme that could negatively impact the entire Russian population, all in the name of making a financial killing.

The story is set in modern-day Russia, and Kerr excels at revealing life as it is lived at the high and low end of the social scale. He poignantly writes of the deprivations and hard times of the Russian people, the shortage of the necessities, the never-ending lines for the basics, the expense to have anything other than the mundane and ordinary. At the same time, he builds wonderful characters about whom the reader really cares—I certainly did not want to find that Grushko was corrupt, for example, in spite of the fact that would be a plausible outcome, given the hardships faced.

Justly nominated for the Gold Dagger Award in 1994, this is an excellently written mystery revealing much about post-Cold War Europe, as well as portraying the inner workings of a typical Russian police department. The procedures don't vary too much from their European and American counterparts, but the Russians are severely limited in what they have available to get the job done. The police are subject to the same kind of chronic shortages as the general populace and just as open to the appeal of the luxuries that the Mafia has to offer. The realistic depiction of daily life in modern-day Russia coupled with an engrossing police investigation make this book an excellent read.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kerr's second breakout novel after 'A Philosophical Investigation' (the point where his wonderful Nazi-Germany Detective series was probably wearing on him). It's 1992 and the Soviet Union is in the throes of collapse and falling into a power vacuum. Everybody's broke, food and basic necessities are scarce, and the Mafia is the best organized group in the country. Kerr's detective is sent to St. Petersburg and works to solve the Mafia murder of a journalist. In the finest tradition of Martin Cruz Smith, the murder and other interesting crimes are connected and eventually solved by dedicated police work.
Unlike Martin Cruz Smith, Kerr gets a lot of the writing wrong. I had trouble following the plot and was repeatedly jarred by switches from first-person to third and switches within the third from this character to that. The narrative felt like something cobbled together from multiple writers.
The most interesting aspect of this novel may be its unique view of the transitional Russia: the Party era is dead and gone, but the Putin corruption era has not yet risen.

[Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed by this cold war detective story about the Russian mafia and crooked cops and everyone else. The description of "churkis" (Russian mobsters) and the desperation of a broke mother russia rang so true they could be in a history book, but the story took forever to move. I think it was somewhere near page 100 till the reader has any clue what the plot is about SPOILER ALERT (radioactive black market beef). I guess Russia was a better playground for spies in the LeCarre era --this being post communist when everyone waiting on bread lines and everyone is on the take. I learned a good deal, but I didn't love it.

[Claire Sharifi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just ok- maybe this is part of a series, because this book seemed like it served as a transition piece, or a set up for a larger conflict and subsequent resolution. Plus, while the characters weren't under developed per se, reading this book made me feel like I was walking into an ongoing conversation. I got the gist of everything, but it seemed like some important context was missing and that made me pretty ambivalent about the characters.
I did, however, enjoy reading about Yeltsin-era Russia. And I love the directly word-for-word translated colloquialisms and idioms.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biggest handicap for me was the Russian names, which Kerr could hardly avoid using. The story had a nice symmetry to it and evidently was written to be the first in a series. There was an ironic tone to Dead Meat, which matched the weary post-Yeltsin world of the novel. Even the humor is dark. However, as dark as the life portrayed in Russia, Kerr's Berlin series seems more sinister; I don't remember any jokes in them. Well-researched historical crime is a favorite sub-genre. This is another good one.

[Korynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essentially a police procedural that occurs in St Petersburg, Russia. We are introduced to a detective from Moscow who is visiting St Peter with an eye to learning new methods. In the process we follow several violent and conflicting crimes that end up being a bigger picture: a conspiracy by the profiteering Russian mafia. In all, a distinctly dark view of 90's Russian culture leaving the reader with a feeling of sadness.

[John Mccoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If one enjoys Kerr's other detective fiction, this story set in post-communist Russia is a decent supplement to his Bernie Gunther series. A one-off following two detectives combatting the Russian Mafia and general corruption in St. Petersburg, it lacks some of the depth and noir sensibility of the Gunther series, but is well-plotted with likable primary characters. A pleasant but fairly forgettable read.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a bit intimidating at first, with long Russian names, Russian slang (a "chalk" is a cigarette, etc.) and unfamiliar law enforcement and government agencies, but once I got oriented to the world of St. Petersburg and Moscow a few years after the death of the USSR, it was interesting and well written, with a nice surprise ending.

[Zhengc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike 2 other Philip Kerr books I read which were about Nazi Germany, this one's background is at Soviet Union in 1993. To me, the detection process shown in the book is not extraordinary, the most interesting gain is that you do get a sense of what's like to live in that space and time which was pretty horrible.

[grundoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 A nameless investigator from Moscow is assigned to a St. Petersburg squad, ostensibly to observe anti-Mafia technique. A perfectly solid work, told in 1st and 3rd person, painting a bleak matter-of-fact picture of post-Soviet state of affairs. I'd absolutely recommend it if looking for that sub-genre, but being a standalone there's no real reason to call attention to it otherwise.